The Full-STAC Future: Building the Open Digital Health Ecosystem

As digital health systems scale globally, the need for coherence, interoperability, and sustainability has never been more urgent. Too often, countries are forced to navigate a fragmented landscape of tools, technologies, and approaches that don’t align—leading to siloed data, duplicated efforts, and diminished impact. Yet a better path is possible: one rooted in open standards, shared infrastructure, reusable content, and community-driven collaboration.

At the Global Digital Health Forum, The Full-STAC Future: Building the Open Digital Health Ecosystem panel will delve into this integrated approach to building digital public infrastructure for health. Anchored in the “Full-STAC” principles of Standards, Technologies, Architectures, Content, and Community, this track will explore how open, interoperable systems can drive more equitable, efficient, and people-centered care, primed to harness the full potential of AI.

Discussions will focus on:

• Relevance of the Full-STAC approach especially in light of recent changes in Global Health funding landscape
• How the community is addressing key skills gaps via capacity building efforts
• What is happening at the country level to translating these policy ideas into practice
• The potential for AI opportunities and how we can apply the Full-STAC approach to help catalyze this

Speakers include:

• Anne Stake, Gates Foundation
• Steven Wanyee, Health Informatics in Africa (HELINA)
• Garrett Mehl, Digital Health Technology Unit, WHO
• Fred Hersch, Open Health Stack, Google
• Rubayat Khan, Endless Network
• Dr. Joyce Wamicwe, Digital Health Agency, Ministry of Health Kenya