The World Health Organization has launched the process to draw up its Global Plan of Action for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All, inviting contributions from stakeholders, including governments and non-state actors. The Action Plan envisages securing commitment from twelve multilateral organizations, including the WHO and the World Bank Group, to implementing joint actions to help countries achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in the area of health. The raft of proposals includes creating new forums to speed up research, offer greater access and promote innovation in biomedical products. The consultation process will be open until June 30, after which the final version of the plan is expected to be presented in September 2019.

The draft Global Plan details the need to step up joint and multisectoral action to help countries strengthen investments in their health systems and foster the exchange of innovation and knowledge. Opinions have been requested concerning seven documents which define the areas for joint action: Sustainable Financing; Primary Health Care; Civil Society Engagement; Determinants of Health; Research and Development; Data and Digital Health; and Innovative Programming for Fragile and Vulnerable States.

The measures include standardizing digital tools to monitor and accelerate progress towards compliance with the SDGs, and map out investment plans to foster the right kind of environment for digital health technologies. Several different countries in the region are already making progress in this area; on June 11, the Colombian Senate’s Seventh Committee passed a bill creating electronic medical records applicable to all public and private health centers, while Chile is promoting the application of the Digital Hospital, to bring health services to the entire country.

So far, the documents submitted for consultation are drafts that will be used as input to draw up the final Global Action Plan. Interested parties may send in their comments about specific documents, as well as comments of a more general nature, until June 30, 2019, to [email protected].