Indonesia
Transform Health Indonesia, coordinated by CISDI (Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives), serves to drive inclusive digital health transformation in Indonesia. The key focus of the national coalition is on advancing vital initiatives related to digitalisation in the health sector, including digital campaigns, capacity building on digital competencies, and the digital budget checklist to strengthen accountability and evidence-based planning. The national coalition will also continue to engage in policy advocacy with the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders to ensure that digital health policies in Indonesia remain equitable, participatory, and aligned with the global Transform Health agenda.
Additionally, collaboration between Transform Health Indonesia and Technical Working Group on Health Information Systems is expected to strengthen synergy between civil society initiatives and government-led digital health transformation efforts, fostering alignment in governance, interoperability, and digital capacity building.
Key Objectives
Build a movement that unites diverse organisations, institutions, and community groups from various backgrounds committed to achieving UHC 2030 through enhanced primary health care and improved access to health data enabled by digital technology.
Conduct campaigns and advocacy efforts to promote equitable access to primary health services.
Encourage youth and women’s participation and leadership through gender-sensitive and socially inclusive approaches in digital transformation processes, while strengthening people’s ownership and control over their health data to improve public health outcomes.
The Indonesia Digital Health Landscape
Currently, more than 80% of healthcare facilities are untouched by digital technologies. However, COVID-19 acted as an impetus for the Government of Indonesia to push forward digital transformation plans across the public sector, including health. In March 2021, the DTO (Digital Transformation Office) at MoH was established focusing on three major aspects: electronic medical records, simplification of health service applications and regulatory support for the health innovation ecosystem. In December 2021, the Digital Transformation Strategy 2021-2024 was launched. However, the resources allocated to implementation of digital health roadmap at sub-national level are unclear. Further, the government has not set up any mechanisms for multi-sectoral dialogue on the implementation of the digital health blueprint that engages youth, women and marginalised groups.
The COVID-19 pandemic not only encouraged innovation from the public sector but also the private sector thrived with over 400 health applications working in Indonesia, all with different standards and operating systems. This is where interoperability becomes imperative to enable different institutions’ platforms, whether private or public, to “talk to each other” to provide quality, effective and efficient health care.
Indonesia’s internet usage is great with 202.6 mil internet users by January 2021, with an increase of 16% from 2020 to 2021. And mobile connection reached 345.5 mil by January 2021 with an over 1.2% increase in the same period. Yet inequalities remain a problem – between the main island of Java to others (West and East region), the gender gap, urban and rural gap and access to remote areas. Therefore, digital literacy among the marginalised communities must be a priority to respond to these gaps.
Digital health is not yet part of the health curriculum in universities, making courses still out of date. Therefore, making digital health an integral narrative in health science academia by including it as a curriculum, starting front the public health faculties and moving toward the entire health science realm of universities.
Resources
Landscape Analysis of Digital Health for Universal Health Coverage in Indonesia
Digital Public Health Curriculum [Indonesian version]
Analysis of Digital Health Readiness of Primary Healthcare in Indonesia
Literature Review: Electronic Personal Health Record (ePHR)
Digital Literacy Assessment: Primary Health Centre Workers
Digital Health Curriculum Reform in Indonesia
Other National Coalitions
