Addis Ababa, — The digitization of the health sector holds immense potential to catalyze systemic change while ensuring inclusivity for the rural population, Health Minister Lia Tadesse said.

In her opening remark at the workshop on "Making Responsible Digital Payments Work for Ethiopia's Health Sector", Lia said that the digital technologies are reshaping discovery, development, and delivery of health products and services ultimately paving the way for affordable, accessible and ubiquitous healthcare.

"The integration of electronic and medical records, computerized clinical decision support systems, and telemedicine and mobile health has already demonstrated the power to strengthen healthcare systems," she added.

According to her, the Digital Health Blueprint (DHBp) guides and supports the ministry of health, regions, partners and the private sector in implementing digital health over the next decade.

Minister Lia noted "the DHBp, aligned with the Digital Ethiopia 2025 Strategy and Health Sector Transformation Plan II, identifies digital health payments as one of its intervention areas."

Incentivizing health workers, cost saving, improving access to health coverage, increasing transparency, and enhanced data collection opportunity are among the potential benefits of digital health payments for stakeholders, it was indicated.

The workshop has been convened to discuss opportunities, agree on a framework, and chart a path for digitizing payments in the health sector in Ethiopia.

The workshop also aims to provide further insight of the ongoing digital payment initiatives and seeks to identify challenges in implementing responsible digital payments, explore available solutions in Ethiopia. And develop an inclusive implementation plan with key payment guidelines.