ICTworks

USAID is publishing this Request for Information (RFI) to better understand how to advance partner countries’ national health information systems (HIS), digital health ecosystems, and optimize the availability, quality, and use of information to achieve national and global public health objectives.

Respond Now: Deadline is March 22, 2204

The obtained information will be used to help make planning decisions and may inform activity design to improve future development outcomes, but is solely for market research purposes. All types of organizations and firms are strongly encouraged to submit a response, including small businesses.

RFI on National Digital Health Programming

USAID is exploring a mechanism design that integrates with and advances countries’ national digital health and data ecosystems and optimizes availability, quality, and use of information to achieve national public health objectives.

USAID would like to ensure that any potential new activities leverage past and present contributions to drive innovative, sustainable, and scalable solutions in support of country-owned and led health information systems and data that are agile and responsive to emerging needs. Such activities would support local capacity strengthening and use of host-country stakeholders’ capabilities to ensure sustainable development for data- and evidence-driven service delivery and health system resilience.

Please feel free to answer only the questions you are comfortable answering, but USAID requests that you are clear on which question you are answering.

Organization and Capabilities

1. Please indicate your organization type and size – examples include commercial, non-profit, small business, etc. Please indicate all that apply. If you are registered in SAM (https://sam.gov), please include your Unique Entity Identifier (UEI). If you are not registered in SAM, please note that.
2. Please indicate your organization’s geographic area of practice and country (or countries) of legal establishment/registration.
3. Please indicate whether you have managed any USG awards in the past 5 years as a prime awardee. If you have, please note the name, award number, total award value, and client. Please prioritize experience that is most relevant to the technical focus areas of this RFI – examples are okay, this does not have to be comprehensive – a table is sufficient. If you have not, please provide any relevant experience with the United States’ Government (USG) as a sub-awardee. If you do not have any experience working with the USG as an awardee or sub-
   awardee, please note that.
4. Do you currently hold any Government Wide Acquisition Contracts? If so, which one(s)? (GSA Multiple Award Schedule, OASIS, etc.)

Key Objectives and Future Proofing

5. What do you anticipate being the most important trends and developments in data, digital health, and HIS over the next 5-10 years that will benefit partner country health outcomes?
   Example areas to address in your response:
   1. New, innovative technology approaches that respond to the fast-evolving information sector and ongoing interest in more granular, frequent, and real time data.
   2. Approaches for ensuring individual-level data is adequately secured/protected and appropriately used while also facilitating access for health program planning and quality improvement.
   3. Critical challenges or emerging issues USAID is not currently addressing but should consider.
6. Approaches that best position USAID support to help partner country governments and
   their people navigate and benefit from these developments. What are specific approaches or solutions to ensure that HIS and digital health ecosystem investments consider and address data needs for improved service delivery?
7. USAID implementing mechanisms operate globally across the health sector at both the global and country levels. From your perspective, what are some of the potential costs and benefits of a data, digital health, and HIS mechanism capable of providing high-level, strategic support to these implementing mechanisms in areas related to countries’ digital health ecosystems, health information exchange, standards, and shared services? What capabilities and services would make such a supporting mechanism the most beneficial?

Barriers and Opportunities:

With respect to the virtuous cycle of data demand, collection, availability, and use, barriers may be present at a variety of points in the national digital health ecosystem and health system processes and functions, from financing, governance and policy to ICT infrastructure and national health information (enterprise) architecture, to workforce management and capacity.

8. What do you think are key barriers hindering success for development projects in these areas, why, and what opportunities and solutions do you propose to address them?
   Example areas to address in your response:
   1. Governance challenges to optimized country health information systems, digital health ecosystems, and data use.
   2. Critical challenges and gaps that impede competency development, continuous performance improvement, and local talent attraction and retention in countries’ HIS, digital health, and data workforce.
   3. Current barriers to implementing the four priorities of USAID’s Vision for Action in Digital Health, and how future USAID mechanisms can help overcome these challenges.
   4. Current challenges and opportunities that stakeholders in the health sector face when seeking to align with the Principles for Digital Development.
   5. Critical country-level bottlenecks to sustained, improved data quality and utilization of data for health sector planning and service delivery.

Monitoring & Accountability

9. How can we support country stakeholders to apply and use existing HIS and digital health ecosystem metrics to prioritize areas for investment, monitor progression towards maturity, and ensure accountability for improvement?

Localization

10. What are the barriers or opportunities that impede or allow local/regional organizations to effectively partner with country governments to provide leadership and technical assistance on HIS, digital health, and data use, and to build related capacity and literacy at all levels of a health system?
    Example areas to address in your response:
    1. Operational and technical capacity gaps and opportunities that exist among local digital health stakeholders, including the private sector, to support sustainable locally-led implementation.
    2. Gaps and opportunities in local capacity or resources related to software development and engineering capabilities in partner countries to allow for sustainable locally-led implementation.
    3. Effective strategies for strengthening local capacity and fostering leadership and ownership around HIS, digital health, and data use.

How to Respond to the RFI

Please review the specific instructions in the RFI. You will need to use the USAID template for uniformity and ease of review. Responses should be sent to USAID no later than March 22, 2024. Please include “RFI [7200AA24RFI00011]” in the Subject Line along with your organization’s name.

Please note that responding to this RFI will not give any advantage to or preclude any organization/individual from any solicitation that may be issued in the future, as any/all comments received will be for information gathering purposes only.

Information received in response to this RFI will become the property of USAID; proprietary information or information that cannot be shared should not be sent. USAID may use any information provided without incurring any obligation. USAID reserves the right to, or not to incorporate any, some, or none of the comments received from this RFI into any subsequent solicitations or design documents.