ArticleNPJ digital medicine2025
African digital health strategic plans analysis: key weaknesses in contextualization, intervention focus, and technological foresight.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reported Effectiveness of a Text-Based Post-Operative Care Intervention After Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) to Improve Quality of Care and Adverse Events Identification in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Scoping Review.Health science reports · 2026Review
- Digital health system integration in Ghana: a scoping review of governance arrangements, interoperability aspirations, and regulatory gaps.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- State of Digital Health in 32 Countries of the WHO African Region: A Multi-Country Maturity Assessment with Short-Term Longitudinal Comparisons Across Leadership, Policy, and Health Systems Domains (2023 - 2025).Journal of healthcare leadership · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Digital health strategies are increasingly being adopted in Africa, but their consistency with best practice planning is poorly documented. 54 countries were screened; 48 had a plan in the Global Digital Health Monitor, and 11 recent plans met the inclusion criteria. Using the "Ready, Extract, Analyze, Distill" methodology and a customized grid merging the Walt-Gilson policy triangle with WHO/ITU standards, we compared four dimensions: context, content, priority actions, and emerging technologies. Only one strategy reported complete socio-economic and health data; more than half of the strategies did not provide the challenges facing health systems; and there were recurring gaps in the pillars relating to workforce, legal frameworks, financing, and interoperability. Most visions cited universal health coverage (8/11) and quality of care (7/11), but objectives followed three distinct approaches to achieving them. Of 148 planned digital health interventions, 45% target providers, and just 7% clients; linkages between interventions and stated health system challenges are often weak. None of the plans explicitly provides for the integration of emerging technologies or locally adapted innovations. These findings have highlighted weaknesses in contextualization, challenge-based planning, and innovation in strategies, set priorities for the next review of these plans, and aim to increase the expected outcome.
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.