The World Bank hosted the panel session “Scaling Digital Public Infrastructure for Health Approaches through Implementable Blueprints” at the 2025 Global Digital Health Forum held on December 4, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya.
The session discussed operationalizing digital health strategies through blueprints, aligning digital health infrastructures, lessons from scaling at a national and regional level, takeaways from the Digital Health Blueprint Toolkit Bootcamp held in Manila, and collaborating with stakeholders.
Ali Habib from the World Bank opened the session by presenting the key features of the Digital Health Blueprint Toolkit and how it helps countries contextualize their context, model the return on investment, and when they can expect to see it.
Lessons from the Manila Blueprint Bootcamp
Jai Ganesh Udayasankaran, Executive Director of the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN), highlighted the network’s core areas of focus and work in the region, particularly capacity-building initiatives, including trainings, and support to national digital health programs in member countries. He also shared insights from the Digital Health Blueprint Toolkit Bootcamp held in the Philippines.
Udayasankan began by introducing AeHIN’s collaborative work with countries in the Asian region. He shared that while it is known that about 129 countries worldwide have digital health strategies, their implementation isn’t without challenges. For implementing the national digital health strategies, it is important to take into consideration all the resources needed, whether human, financial, or infrastructure, by means of a costed blueprint over a course of 5 to 10 years.
Part of AeHIN’s work is to assist countries facing challenges in implementing their digital health strategies by engaging stakeholders through convergence workshops to help them see the national big picture, coordinate, and align resources essential to implementing the strategy. For countries that do not yet have a national digital health strategy or need updates and revisions, AeHIN helps them identify and bridge gaps, in terms of Governance, Architecture, Program Management, Standards, and Interoperability (GAPS), which are essential components that highlight key areas countries can focus on to efficiently and effectively implement their digital health strategies.
AeHIN’s contributions to the development of the toolkit trace back to the 2023 AeHIN General Meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, themed “Ensuring Digital Health for Better Outcomes: Putting Blueprints into Practice” and the webinars AeHIN hosted during the drafting of the toolkit and after its launch, showing the continuous collaborations of AeHIN and the World Bank.
At the heart of his talk, Udayasankaran shared key takeaways from the first Digital Health Blueprint Toolkit Bootcamp in Asia, held in Manila, Philippines, from 4-6 November, which gathered 54 participants from 20 countries and trained them to be toolkit facilitators.
The bootcamp aimed to help participants learn to facilitate and implement the toolkit in their countries, share their experiences developing and implementing blueprints, and create a pool of trained facilitators. Udayasankaran reiterated that, “There are so many digital health tools and frameworks, this is not meant to be yet another. It is a process.” The aim is to create a pool of facilitators in the region who could actively work together and contribute to the development, periodic review, and implementation of digital health blueprints in their own countries and regions.
Before the bootcamp, participants completed a survey, and the results showed that countries are at different stages of development, endorsement, and implementation of the blueprint.
Udayasankaran shared key insights from the bootcamp, particularly on convening and operationalizing technical working groups (TWGs), contextualizing the toolkit’s contents and accompanying templates, investing in the right infrastructure, establishing a community of practice (CoP), and preparing for the inclusion of artificial intelligence (AI).
On the final day of the bootcamp, a Community of Practice (CoP) focused on the blueprint toolkit was established to create an enabling environment that empowers the trained facilitators through peer learning, sharing, and support, and drives the development and implementation of the digital health blueprint in countries.
Toolkit implementations in Africa
Dr. Salif Traore from the Ministry of Health in Burkina Faso presented their experience developing an enterprise architecture, affirming that the toolkit is a solid reference for developing an architecture plan and highlighting the importance of an iterative approach. The toolkit helped Burkina Faso work in a structured, co-creation approach to build capacity among various stakeholders, align contributions, and pool resources.
Tony Chebani from the Ministry of Health in Botswana shared their journey in developing and scaling their national digital health blueprint. They learned that countries need to adapt to change and should not be constrained by the direction their blueprints point; interoperability and stakeholder engagement are essential, and regional alignment amplifies national progress.
Benjamin Niyitegeka from the Ministry of Health in Rwanda shared that they are using the toolkit to develop their blueprint for the next five years, drawing on key components such as enterprise architecture and governance models to ensure alignment with global standards. They moved from fragmented, program-specific systems to a more connected, centralized architecture. He also shared details about the Smart Africa Blueprint, which sets the stage for a single digital market across Africa.
Feedback on the toolkit and future improvements
Amanda Bendor from the World Bank shared that people appreciate the toolkit as a process grounded in health and health priorities, and that it considers all the components needed to develop and sustain a blueprint architecture. She emphasized that a key for any country is having a local facilitator “who really knows the local context, who knows the systems, who knows how to talk to the TWG on how to navigate and guide them through this process.”
Future plans for the toolkit include providing guidance on the costing tool and on TWGs, particularly the process of convening them and their composition.