The World Health Assembly is the supreme decision-making body for World Health Organization (WHO). It generally meets in Geneva in May each year and is attended by delegations from all 194 Member States. Its main function is to determine the policies of the Organization. This year, members of the 71st World Health Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on Digital Health. The resolution was initiated by India and was co-sponsored by 20 countries.

Health and Family Welfare Minister J.P. Nadda announced in his tweet, "I'm happy to share that the landmark resolution on #DigitalHealth - initiated by India - was unanimously adopted by the 71st World Health Assembly in Geneva. India received widespread praise for its leadership on this forward looking agenda."

In his address at the Assembly, Nadda said: “Digital health technology has a huge potential for supporting Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and improving accessibility, quality, and affordability of health services. This is a resolution which should be owned by all of us so as to pave the path for a forward-looking global health agenda.”

The resolution paves the path for WHO to establish a global strategy on digital health identifying priority areas including where WHO should focus its efforts and engages member states to optimize their health systems in sync with the global digital health agenda.

“Digital health is important in the context of countries achieving health-related SDG targets as well as WHO’s implementation of 13th General Program of Work. Digital health agenda is multisectoral and cross-cutting in nature. This resolution is about digitally empowering member states, WHO, health providers and above all the patients. We all need to embark on a journey from a Digital Health Resolution towards a Digital Health Movement,” said Joint Secretary (International Health) Lav Agarwal while introducing the resolution on digital health at the assembly on behalf of India and 20 co-sponsors.

Nadda had also indicated that India, with support from WHO plans to host a Global Digital Health Summit in near future and hopes it would contribute to WHO's efforts to come up with a comprehensive global health strategy on digital health.

In February, at the Global Digital Health Partnership Summit at Canberra in Australia, Nadda had said India is committed to reforms in health services delivery using Information and Communication Technology and it will take advantage of the Digital India programme.

Nadda had stressed on the importance of building digital health ecosystem partnerships with private healthcare providers, academia, health IT practitioners, industry, patient groups and regulatory bodies. He had also said India was planning to create an integrated digital health platform and enable the creation of electronic health records for the 1.3 billion people of India.