Countries and the international community through the Sustainable Development Goals have set themselves ambitious targets for improving health and social protection. But in many countries, basic statistics such as who is born and who dies or information on important indicators such as new infections with a virus or service coverage are lacking or patchy. Without reliable and consistent information, policy makers and service managers cannot make informed decisions about where to target resources or which interventions work.

Secure, connected and digitized health and social protection systems can reduce such inefficiencies, improve access, reduce costs, increase quality, and personalize services. They can ensure crucial data are available almost immediately at local and central level, for example, to ensure poor families obtain the support they are entitled to, to detect and manage disease outbreaks, to set up and run health insurance schemes or to manage the maintenance of high-tech medical equipment.

German Development Cooperation aims at enabling its partner countries to use the potential of digital technology to build scalable, sustainable and interoperable digital health and social protection systems. Check the selected readings listed below to get an overview.