Co-developing Georgia’s National Digital Health Strategy through a multistakeholder convergence workshop: An implementation case study from the WHO European Region

Nato Gzirishili, Mehar Grover, Resham Sethi, Mariam Beridze, Tomas Roubal, Lela Sulaberidze, Karapet Davtyan, Silviu Domente and Karthik Adapa

PLOS Digital Health, 2026, vol. 5, issue 10, 1-28

Abstract: National digital health strategies (DHS) are widely recognized as essential for advancing universal health coverage. However, published evidence on operational, multi-stakeholder approaches to co-development—particularly beyond the Asian and African settings where convergence methodology has previously been applied—remains limited. This study details the application of a convergence-based methodology to validate and refine the draft National DHS of Georgia, an upper-middle-income country, aligning it with European Union frameworks. An implementation case study was conducted in Georgia from June to September 2025. Central to this was the Multistakeholder Convergence Workshop, adapted from the Asian Development Bank Digital Health Convergence Meeting Toolkit and a four-phase blueprint methodology. Forty-seven participants from diverse sectors (public, private, academia, and development partners) collaborated in five thematic working groups. They reviewed the draft DHS, generating recommendations that were synthesized against the seven WHO-ITU eHealth strategy building blocks using hybrid deductive-inductive thematic analysis by two independent coders with third-party arbitration. The revised strategy comprises six strategic goals and 38 priority activities. Key technical recommendations included adopting a federated data governance model, utilizing the existing national identification number instead of a separate Health ID, and establishing a national Health Information Exchange. The strategy endorses FHIR for data exchange, LOINC for laboratory data, and the WHO-FIC (including ICD-11) complemented by SNOMED CT. Governance recommendations emphasized enacting a stand-alone Digital Health Act, forming a dedicated Digital Health Unit within the MoIDPLHSA, integrating digital health into professional education, and extending the strategy horizon to 2030 with a mid-2026 review checkpoint. Structured convergence methodologies, initially developed for Asian settings, can be effectively adapted for upper-middle-income WHO European Region countries pursuing European Health Data Space alignment. This approach produced technically specific outputs, reinforced national ownership, and supported Georgia’s transition toward implementation, offering a highly transferable framework for similar contexts.Author summary: We describe how Georgia developed its first National Digital Health Strategy through a structured multistakeholder convergence workshop—a method previously used to support digital health blueprint development in countries across Asia and Africa. Like many health systems undergoing transition from centralized public models toward mixed public–private delivery, Georgia faces fragmented digital systems, weak interoperability between predominantly private healthcare providers and public platforms, gaps in the digital health workforce, and incomplete legal frameworks. We brought together 47 participants from government, private healthcare providers, academia, professional associations, and development partners into five thematic working groups over two days in July 2025. Each group reviewed a section of the draft strategy and proposed concrete revisions. Together, participants validated the strategy’s vision, mission, and guiding principles, and recommended a federated data governance model, adoption of international interoperability standards, a stand-alone Digital Health Act, a dedicated Digital Health Unit within the Ministry, and stronger pre-service and in-service training. They also extended the implementation horizon from two years to 2030. Our experience suggests that the convergence methodology is portable beyond its original setting and offers a potentially transferable approach for other countries developing or refining national digital health strategies, while implementation effectiveness remains to be evaluated.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pdig00:0001787

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pdig.0001787

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