What is it about?
Universal Health Coverage (UHC) seeks to ensure that everyone can access quality healthcare without financial hardship. Achieving this goal requires addressing not only health systems themselves, but also the Social Determinants of Health, such as education, living conditions, and access to information, which strongly influence health outcomes. This chapter highlights the growing importance of Digital Public Goods (DPGs)—open, shared digital resources—in supporting more equitable healthcare systems. It introduces the Open DIKW model, which organizes digital resources into four interconnected layers: Open Data, Open Information, Open Knowledge, and Open Wisdom. Together, these layers help transform raw data into meaningful insights and ethical decision-making that can empower communities, strengthen health systems, and improve access to care. The chapter explores how openness at each DIKW layer enables collaboration, transparency, and local adaptation, while also examining the technical, social, and governance challenges that arise when implementing open digital solutions. It further shows how recent advances in artificial intelligence can amplify the impact of DPGs by improving analysis, prediction, and decision support in healthcare. Importantly, the chapter situates these technological developments within the ethical framework of Digital Health Humanity, emphasizing the need to prioritize human values, equity, and sustainability. By aligning open digital infrastructures, AI, and ethical governance, the chapter outlines pathways toward more inclusive and resilient healthcare systems and reflects on future prospects for achieving Universal Health Coverage worldwide.
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Why is it important?
This chapter is important because it addresses one of the most urgent global challenges: ensuring that everyone, everywhere, can access quality healthcare in a fair and sustainable way. Also it bridges vision and practice—showing how open digital ecosystems, guided by human values and ethical principles, can make Universal Health Coverage a realistic and achievable goal rather than a distant aspiration. This work matters for several key reasons: (A) Health inequities are growing, not shrinking. Large gaps in access to care persist between and within countries, driven by social, economic, and digital inequalities. By focusing on Social Determinants of Health and openness, the chapter directly tackles the root causes of these disparities rather than only their symptoms. (B) Digital health can either reduce or deepen inequality:Digital technologies and AI are rapidly transforming healthcare, but without ethical guidance and inclusive design, they risk reinforcing bias, exclusion, and surveillance. The concept of Digital Health Humanity helps ensure that technology serves people—not the other way around. (C) Digital Public Goods offer a scalable, shared solution: Open data, open knowledge, and open digital infrastructures allow countries—especially low- and middle-income ones—to benefit from shared innovations without prohibitive costs. This makes progress toward Universal Health Coverage more achievable and sustainable. (D) The Open DIKW model connects technology to real-world impact: Many digital health initiatives stop at data collection. By structuring the pathway from data to wisdom, the Open DIKW model clarifies how information can be transformed into actionable knowledge and ethically informed decisions that improve care delivery and policy. (E) AI needs ethical and governance frameworks to be trusted: As AI becomes central to healthcare decision-making, trust, accountability, and transparency are essential. This chapter shows how AI can strengthen health systems when embedded within open, human-centered, and ethically governed frameworks. (F) This chapter aligns global goals with practical pathways: By linking SDG 3.8, Digital Public Goods, AI, and ethics, the chapter provides a coherent roadmap that policymakers, practitioners, and international organizations can use to move from high-level commitments to concrete action.
Perspectives
From my perspective, this chapter is important because it reframes digital health as a moral and societal project, not merely a technical one. Many discussions around Universal Health Coverage focus on financing models, service delivery, or national policy reforms. This chapter does something more foundational: it asks how knowledge itself is produced, shared, governed, and turned into action in health systems. What I find particularly strong is the use of the Open DIKW model as a connective structure. Too often, digital health initiatives celebrate “more data” without addressing whether that data becomes meaningful, trustworthy, or ethically used. By explicitly moving from Open Data to Open Wisdom, the chapter insists that health equity depends on interpretation, context, and values, not just technology. This is a quiet but powerful critique of data-centric solutionism. The chapter’s emphasis on Digital Public Goods is also timely and pragmatic. In a world where proprietary platforms increasingly shape healthcare infrastructures, openness is not only about transparency—it is about sovereignty, resilience, and collective capacity building. The argument that open systems allow communities and countries to adapt solutions to their own social determinants of health is, in my view, one of the chapter’s most compelling contributions. I also appreciate how AI is treated with both optimism and restraint. Rather than presenting AI as a universal remedy, the chapter positions it as an accelerator that amplifies existing structures—for better or worse. By embedding AI within the ethical framework of Digital Health Humanity, the chapter makes a crucial point: the real risk is not intelligent machines, but unreflective systems that scale injustice. Finally, what resonates most with me is the chapter’s future-oriented stance. It does not claim to offer a finished solution to Universal Health Coverage. Instead, it proposes pathways, conditions, and responsibilities. This openness mirrors the very principles it promotes—shared knowledge, ongoing governance, and adaptive learning.
Dr. HDR. Frederic ANDRES, IEEE Senior Member, IEEE CertifAIEd Authorized Lead Assessor (Affective Computing), Unconscious AI Evangelist
National Institute of Informatics
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This page is a summary of: Digital Health Humanity for Universal Health Coverage, August 2025, IGI Global,
DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3373-1330-6.ch006.
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