Transforming health care

Revolutionary changes are needed to reform healthcare delivery systems globally to realise the vision of healthcare access for everyone, no matter their location, facilitated and enabled by effective national digital health ecosystems. This chapter introduces the reader to widely recognised drivers and desired future outcomes. Foundational principles adopted as the focus for this text are identified. This includes the need for sustained leadership, committed investments, effective governance, a national technical framework, and a description of the digital health ecosystem characteristics. Innovation blind spots that have the potential to undermine digital health transformation need to be identified, considered, and included as roadmap components. Principles to be adopted, some examples of existing foundations, and value proposition drivers are introduced, followed by a description of a digitally enabling health environment. The chapter concludes with the identification of key requirements for global and national action to be incorporated in a digital health roadmap which needs to consider numerous fragmented influencing factors. Six foundational concepts representing desired outcomes are introduced.