The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, in collaboration with Pakistan Digital Authority, has conducted the first two consultative workshops in Lahore under the nationwide Digital Sectoral Plan for the Healthcare Sector. The sessions brought together health sector leadership from Punjab along with a broad group of stakeholders to help shape Pakistan’s future state vision for digital health.
The first session focused on Human Resources for Health and was facilitated by Professor Mahmood Shaukat, addressing workforce related challenges and planning considerations within the healthcare digitization agenda. The second session covered Maternal, Newborn and Child Health alongside artificial intelligence, data, and digital health more broadly, and was facilitated by Dr Naeem Majeed. Together, the two sessions gave stakeholders in Punjab an opportunity to weigh in on both workforce and technology dimensions of the national digital health strategy currently being developed.
The Lahore sessions form part of a ten workshop series spanning Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, Gilgit, and Muzaffarabad, designed to build an inclusive digital health strategy for the country by drawing input from stakeholders across different provinces and regions. The nationwide scope of the consultation process reflects an effort to ensure the resulting Digital Sectoral Plan for the Healthcare Sector accounts for the varied needs and capacities of health systems across Pakistan’s different administrative regions, rather than being shaped solely by input from major urban centers.
Officials involved in the process have emphasized that healthcare is an area where digital transformation is felt most directly by citizens, and that progress depends on close engagement between the country’s institutions rather than efforts carried out in isolation. The Lahore workshops add to a broader body of policy engagement between Pakistan Digital Authority and health sector institutions, building on earlier national efforts to develop a coordinated digital health strategy for the country, as the government works to align healthcare digitization with its wider Digital Pakistan agenda.
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