Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and Royal Philips announced this week that they have signed a letter of intent to jointly develop scalable digital transformation plans aimed at improving the quality of immunization data and its collection in primary and community healthcare. Their joint goal is to help Gavi supported countries improve the planning, coverage and impact of immunization programs.
Routine immunization has played a key role in more than halving the annual number of child deaths since 1990. Nevertheless, around 1.5 million children under the age of five still die every year from vaccine-preventable diseases. Through the use of new health IT solutions for the development of improved data collection, and new models for better planning, Gavi and Philips will offer interested countries their complementary expertise to help maximize immunization coverage and effectiveness by identifying children who are missing out on vaccination programs.
Working in partnership with interested Ministries of Health, Gavi and Philips will bring together a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, researchers, designers and digital experts to collaborate on developing a shared vision and plan, tailored to local needs. Philips will leverage its HealthSuite Labs methodology to co-design, prototype and apply new technologies to improve service outreach and enable accurate bottom-up forecasting of immunization needs. In addition, Philips and Gavi aim to develop data-driven feedback mechanisms to help improve decision making and identify the children that would benefit from vaccination.
“We are convinced that partnerships, such as this one with Gavi, are paramount to realising the goal of universal health coverage for all, especially among children,” said Jeroen Tas, CEO, Connected Care and Health Informatics at Philips. “Thanks to the digital revolution, we can now start doing what was previously unthinkable: enable access to care, improve patient outcomes and lower healthcare costs. Our vision for the partnership is that we will put our strengths in connected health, data analytics and population health management to further good use, by helping Gavi and the countries it supports to confidently identify and effectively immunise children, no matter where they live.”
