The World Health Organization (WHO) has joined the newly established Open Health Stack Software Foundation (OHS-SF) to support the development of open, standards-based digital health systems that improve interoperability, country ownership, and long-term sustainability.
Hosted by the Linux Foundation and supported by WHO, Google, and a global coalition of health and technology organizations, the Foundation aims to address the fragmentation of digital health systems by providing open-source software, developer tools, and shared standards that countries can adopt without vendor lock-in.
The initiative builds on the Open Health Stack collaboration launched by WHO and Google in 2023, following a 2020 agreement to make WHO’s SMART Guidelines easier to implement using open standards such as HL7 FHIR. Today, Open Health Stack tools support digital health services for millions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South-East Asia.
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The Foundation will help countries develop resilient digital health infrastructure by maintaining reusable open-source code, supporting standards-based health information exchange, and enabling local developers and governments to build and maintain their own digital health systems.
It also includes AI Commons for Global Health, a collaborative initiative co-developed with WHO to support trustworthy AI in healthcare through shared technical standards, evaluation tools, and interoperable infrastructure aligned with WHO guidance.
Dr Garrett Mehl, Head of Unit for Digital Health and Information Systems at WHO, states: “We have watched too many promising digital health systems collapse when the donor project that funded them ended. The path to resilient national digital health ecosystems runs through country ownership of both the governance and the technical foundations of their systems; governance they control, standards they can test against, and software they are not perpetually dependent on external vendors to maintain. The Open Health Stack Software Foundation is a critical piece of that infrastructure for independence: open, community-governed, not owned by any single actor, and designed to outlast any individual funding cycle.”
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According to WHO, the initiative will help countries strengthen digital health capacity, reduce reliance on proprietary systems, and accelerate the adoption of secure, standards-based digital health technologies that support better healthcare delivery.
Dr Michael Howell, Chief Health Officer at Google, states: “Open Health Stack is a great example of open, transparent, and verifiable infrastructure that helps build truly trustworthy AI in health. We are proud to contribute Open Health Stack to the Linux Foundation, ensuring that developers can build digital tools that clinicians and public health professionals can rely on and that are based on accessible, shared standards. Working alongside the entire community allows us to co-create an ecosystem focused on health care access and innovation.”
