Smart Green solutions for resilient health system infrastructure
The Global Fund for AIDS, TB and MalariaIn addition to UNDP's partnerships with ICC (12,000 networks, 45 million SMEs), UN Global Compact (13,000+ businesses), Microsoft, DHL, and PwC through the COVID-19 Private Sector Global Facility which initially brought this newest iteration of Smart Facilities for Health to the fore, the ITM team has established partnerships with a variety of providers including SMA, Fronius, Victron and Growatt.
Effective delivery of essential health services is hampered by chronic infrastructure gaps, especially connectivity and energy. While governments and their ministries are often enthusiastic about the promise new digital health technologies offer to improve delivery of health services, these solutions are often incompatible with existing systems or indifferent to the established capabilities and investments in place.
Smart Facilities for Health solutions directly address chronic infrastructure gaps to increase the resilience of health systems across functions including medical warehousing and supply chains, laboratories and diagnostics, as well as inpatient and outpatient healthcare delivery while providing the additional insight offered by Smart technologies to enhance overall quality of health system services. Smart Facilities for Health are green, interoperable, plug-and-play solutions that take a user-centered approach to both design and capacity building. This is central to the SFH ethos to seamlessly enhance the solutions, resources and human capital already deployed in service of their populations and the SDGs.
Built-in connectivity is central to the Smart Facilities model. SFHs seek specifically to address digital gaps in infrastructure and addressing the digital divide that has chronically hampered health systems, the quality of services they are able to provide, and the digital solutions available to them to expand access to essential services.
Smart Facilities for Health have brought 5 critical health facilities online (currently 2 in Uganda, 2 in South Sudan and 1 in Sao Tome and Principe) that store medical goods, provide national-level diagnostic services, or provide care directly to patients. The South Sudan Smart Facilities for Health have a combined total of over 20,000 cubic meters of critical national-level medical storage and laboratory space being monitored with Smart solutions.Since 2016 the Smart Facilities across more than 15 countries have produced over 2.15GWh of clean energy, generating over USD$2.9m savings in the premises electricity bills and saved an equivalent of 568 tons of CO2. They also support essential services for an estimated population of 380,000 people.Capacity-building to continue to sustain the Smart Facilities has been successfully deployed in different locations, reaching 60+ UN local key personnel and 41 local SME service providers, of whom over half are already engaged in installations and operations.
An additional 6 countries have expressed interest and engaging in early-stage discussions (Sudan, Burundi, Namibia, Djibouti, Mozambique and Zimbabwe)
