Gates Foundation Funds Digital Square to Standardise Health Information Systems Globally

The Gates Foundation, alongside USAID and other donors, funded Digital Square — a global initiative housed at PATH — to improve how governments design, procure, and pay for digital health technologies. Digital Square promotes interoperability standards, funds development of open-source global goods (including OpenHIE, OpenMRS, and OpenLMIS), and helps countries avoid vendor lock-in for their health information infrastructure. Its work directly shapes the surveillance plumbing of health systems in more than 40 low- and middle-income countries, determining how disease data flows from community health workers to national dashboards.