Assessing the effects of digital technologies on health financing and Universal Health Coverage objectives

Book excerpt: Digital health is a rapidly expanding area of interest for both research, policy and practice, and within that area digital technologies (DTs) for health financing receive increasing attention. DTs can change the nature and business processes of health financing functions and tasks and modify the interactions between health financing actors. Depending on their design features and actual implementation as well as broader contextual factors, DTs can affect the health financing tasks and functions (positively or negatively). However, little robust evidence exists on the impact of DTs specifically on health financing and universal health coverage (UHC) objectives. More rigorous evaluations in this area is urgently needed. The aim of this guide is to support the evidence generation on DTs for health financing. The guide provides orientation to analyse a country use case of digital technology and its (positive and negative) effects for health financing, i.e. whether, how and why it contributes to the realization of desirable health financing attributes and UHC intermediate and final objectives or whether, how and in which circumstances it is actually harmful to these.