Digital Resilience to Covid-19: A Model for National Digital Health Systems to Bounce Forward From the Shock of a Global Pandemic

TL;DR

This paper explores how digital health systems in the Global South can not only recover from COVID-19 disruptions but also improve beyond their previous state by leveraging specific resilience preconditions.

Contribution

It introduces five key preconditions for digital resilience that enable health systems to bounce forward after a pandemic shock, expanding the concept beyond mere recovery.

Findings

Identified five preconditions for digital resilience: training, expertise, autonomy, infrastructure, platform design.

Demonstrated how these preconditions enable systems to strengthen beyond pre-shock levels.

Case study evidence from two countries in the Global South.

Abstract

COVID-19 represented a major shock to global health systems, not the least to resource-challenged regions in the Global South. We report on a case of digital, information system resilience in the response to data needs from the COVID-19 pandemic in two countries in the Global South. In contrast to dominant perspectives where digital resilience enables bounce back or maintenance of a status quo, we identify five bounce forward resilience preconditions (i) distributed training, (ii) local expertise (iii) local autonomy and ownership (iv) local infrastructure and (v) platform design infrastructure. These preconditions enable an elevated degree of resilience that in the face of an external shock such as COVID-19 can deliver a bounce forward or strengthening of the information system beyond its pre-shock state.