‘Fire hose’ of health innovation risks going down the drain

Covid-19 reinforces the need for global co-operation in the nascent digital healthcare industry

This article first published in Financial Times last month.

Technologists around the world are developing digital tools to help distribute a hoped-for Covid-19 vaccine, while innovators are devising ingenious data platforms to help us better respond to the next pandemic. Unfortunately, much of that work may be wasted.

As a digital health adviser to global health organisations, I have seen countless dazzling ideas since the pandemic broke out. These include electronic sanitising wands, AI-driven mental health platforms and online dashboards that allow medical researchers to track outbreaks.

Yet I often leave pitch sessions more worried than encouraged because we lack adequate means for scaling the best of these tools to reach millions of people rather than just thousands. We also devote little effort to serving people who will need these innovations the most — the elderly and those on low incomes.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed deep challenges within our nascent digital health sector. For one, we are drinking from a fire hose of innovation, with many governments and health systems overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tools and ideas.

Worse, there is little consistency in privacy standards, interoperability or regulation. The end result is a cacophony of good intentions and meaningful contributions from tech companies, governments, academics and non-governmental organisations that threatens to drown out the best ideas in a din of inefficiency.

We now have redundant testing and tracing tools, a lack of co-ordination between health databases, sham products being pushed into the market and online platforms used to spread misinformation.

Political fights over ownership of data have further complicated the picture, while there are broader questions about bias in AI and the proper role for commercial players in global health.

For instance, a non-profit group called the Commons Project is developing a secure means to document and verify who has received a Covid-19 vaccine, which governments will probably require to bring global trade and travel back to pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, private companies are looking to provide related technologies for vaccines and diagnostics for outbreaks.

Those innovations warrant support, but they also raise challenges. Will the information be protected or shareable, and by whom? How would these tools work with existing health records and data sets? Who would pay for and have access to them? Who would handle oversight?

We need a coherent global framework to shape and implement these approaches so that innovators, health authorities, investors and citizens can all benefit. We already have models including Gavi, the UN-backed global vaccine alliance, and Cepi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Now we must develop an infrastructure to support policies around digital public goods — whether as part of an existing institution or something new.