Applying a convergence methodology in multi-country, multi-stakeholder workshops to co-develop national digital...

Digital transformation offers substantial opportunities to strengthen health systems and accelerate progress towards universal health coverage (UHC). However, endorsement and operationalization of national digital health blueprints remain uneven across the World Health Organization (WHO) South-East Asia Region (SEAR). This study describes and evaluates a structured, convergence-based methodology applied to co-develop and refine national digital health blueprints in three Member States-Maldives, Nepal, and Timor-Leste-and distils transferable lessons for replication, subject to appropriate contextualization to each country's needs and realities.

An implementation case study was conducted across the three countries between September 2024 and April 2025. A six-stage methodology was applied, comprising (i) formal request and scoping, (ii) situational analysis including in-country assessment and peer-country benchmarking, (iii) drafting anchored in the WHO-International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Digital Health Strategy Building Blocks, (iv) a standardized two-day multi-stakeholder convergence workshop adapted from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Digital Health Convergence Meeting Toolkit, (v) systematic feedback integration, and (vi) formal handover to Ministries of Health. Workshop deliberations were captured through structured rapporteur notes, group presentations, and written feedback; thematic coding was performed independently by two analysts with a third acting as arbiter, and country focal points performed member-check validation of the synthesised findings. Workshop outputs were thematically synthesized against the WHO-ITU seven eHealth strategy building blocks.

Stakeholders from government, international agencies, academia, the private sector, and civil society participated across the three workshops. Cross-country synthesis identified convergent strategic priorities, including strengthened governance and institutional coordination, interoperability through Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based architectures, infrastructure investment, workforce capacity-building, and robust legal frameworks for data protection. Country-specific recommendations reflected differing baseline maturities and institutional arrangements. All three blueprints were formally handed over to the respective Ministries of Health within an approximately fifteen-month cycle from initial request.

A structured convergence methodology can produce contextually relevant, nationally owned digital health blueprints adaptable across diverse low- and middle-income country settings. Refinements in pre-workshop preparation, in-workshop processes, structured elicitation of feedback, broader stakeholder composition, and local-language facilitation would further enhance generalizability, inclusivity, and representativeness. These findings offer a replicable model for SEAR Member States and comparable settings advancing digital health transformation.