What’s the future for Digital Public Infrastructure?: Experts speak at Global DPI Summit

“… we are talking about public digital infrastructure. So why digital? In the context of healthcare, I would claim that there is no other way out… I mean, healthcare, the focus itself is changing. It is not just a response. It's going to be preventive. More and more people in the future are going to have stuff like diabetes and cancer... Not the occasional malaria or flu, etc. So, you've got to track people, screen them, and then treat them, etc. So digital [infrastructure] and healthcare are made for each other for the future…” said S. Gopalakrishnan, CEO, National Health Authority at the Global Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Summit in Pune on June 12, 2023. Gopalakrishnan was among six other stakeholders speaking at a session of the two-day summit to discuss the overview of DPI alongside: Dr R. S. Sharma, Chairman, Geo-Spatial Data Promotion and Development Committee; Christine Martin Meier, Director, Digital Public Goods Charter; and Keyzom Ngodup Massally, Head of Digital Programmes, Chief Digital Office, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), among others. While Gopalakrishnan and Sharma focused on the role of digital infrastructure in healthcare, others talked about the principles required for an effective DPI. On health and infrastructure There needs to be a consensus on the basics of healthcare infrastructure: According to Gopalakrishnan, any country which wants to implement a public digital health infrastructure has to establish foundational rules and policies. He gave the example of identity databases where multiple players cannot have access to such datasets. “[The basics]…