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Amakomaya — Aamako Maya Apps Pvt. Ltd.

WHO and Global Guidance

WHO publications are Tier 1 sources and are free to download. They are most useful for three things a national programme needs and rarely produces well on its own: a shared vocabulary for describing digital health interventions, a method for linking health programme needs to system requirements, and normative weight when arguing for architecture over point solutions.

They are not implementation manuals. None of them will tell you which FHIR profile to write.

The core documents​

Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2025​

The framing document: digital health as an enabler of universal health coverage, with objectives around collaboration, national strategy, governance and person-centred systems. Cite it for the policy layer.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240020924

Classification of Digital Health Interventions, Services and Applications​

A taxonomy of what digital health systems do, organised by user category — clients, health care providers, health system managers, and data services. It is the shared vocabulary for describing capability before naming software, and it makes your capability model comparable with other countries'.

Version 2.0 also covers digital health services and applications.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240081949

Use it directly in capability architecture rather than inventing a local taxonomy.

Digital Implementation Investment Guide (DIIG)​

Method for planning and costing a digital health investment: from health programme objective, through digital health interventions, to system requirements, architecture and budget. The most practically useful of the set when a business case has to survive a finance ministry.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240010567

Digital Health Platform Handbook (WHO and ITU)​

Guidance on building a national digital health platform — the shared infrastructure and services that individual applications reuse rather than each rebuilding identity, terminology and exchange. The closest WHO product to a reference architecture, and complementary to OpenHIE rather than an alternative.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240013728

Monitoring and evaluating digital health interventions​

A practical guide to evaluating whether a digital health intervention works, covering study design, indicators and reporting. Relevant to architecture because it defines what data an implementation must be able to produce about itself.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241511766

Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health​

WHO guidance on AI in health: ethical principles, governance recommendations, and — in the later guidance on large multi-modal models — the specific risks of generative systems in clinical settings.

See AI ethics and AI architecture.

Master facility list resource package​

Guidance on establishing and maintaining a national master facility list — directly relevant to the facility registry, which is the first registry most countries should build.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/-9789241513302

Toolkit for routine health information systems​

Covered separately in WHO Toolkit for RHIS.

SMART Guidelines​

WHO's method for turning a clinical guideline into computable artefacts, and the most architecturally significant of WHO's digital health work. It has its own page: SMART Guidelines.

https://www.who.int/teams/digital-health-and-innovation/smart-guidelines

Digital public infrastructure​

An emerging framing — health systems building on shared national infrastructure for identity, payments, data exchange and consent. Publication status varies considerably across documents in this space. See digital public infrastructure, which is explicit about what is published and what is draft.

Other multilateral and global-goods sources​

SourceWhat it providesTier
ITUJoint work with WHO on the Digital Health Platform Handbook; standards for telecommunications infrastructure1
Digital Public Goods AllianceRegistry of certified digital public goods, including many health platforms — https://digitalpublicgoods.net/registry/2
Digital SquareGlobal goods maturity assessments for health software — https://globalgoodsguidebook.org/2
Principles for Digital DevelopmentNine principles for designing digital programmes in development contexts — https://digitalprinciples.org/2
OpenHIE communityThe reference architecture and its component specifications — https://ohie.org/2
GIZ, World Bank, Gates FoundationCountry implementation reports and funding guidance2–3

The Digital Square global goods maturity model is worth knowing about specifically: it assesses open-source health platforms on global utility, community support and software maturity, and it is the most systematic public assessment of whether a given platform is a safe bet.

How to use these documents​

They work best in this order:

  1. Classification of Digital Health Interventions — name what you are trying to do, in language others recognise
  2. DIIG — connect that to a health programme objective and a cost
  3. Digital Health Platform Handbook and OpenHIE — decide the shared services and the shape of the ecosystem
  4. SMART Guidelines — make the clinical content computable
  5. Monitoring and evaluation guidance — define how you will know whether it worked

They do not replace a national enterprise architecture; they give it structure and external legitimacy. See architecture frameworks.

Caution on citation​

Publication numbering, URLs and titles change as documents are revised. Before citing a WHO document in a specification or tender:

  • Confirm the current edition and its date on the WHO publications site
  • Cite the edition explicitly, not "the WHO guidance"
  • Check whether a document is guidance, a handbook, or a normative recommendation — the three carry different weight and are frequently conflated

Last verified: 2026-08-24.

References​

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