The Pakistan Digital Authority held an introductory meeting with Dr. Azra Fazal Pechuho, Minister for Health, Sindh, as part of continued efforts to build Pakistan’s digital health transformation from the ground up. Saflain Haider, Executive Director of the Digital Innovation Lab for the health sector, shared progress on the Digital Sectoral Plan for health, presented findings from nationwide consultative workshops, and sought the minister’s guidance on the way forward.
During the meeting, Minister Pechuho made the case for a bottom up approach to digital transformation, arguing that existing data systems at the grassroots level should be strengthened first so that the health sector has a robust foundational architecture in place before scaling up digital health solutions. She also underlined data security and patient data privacy as essential considerations as the sector moves forward with its digitization plans, an area of particular importance given the sensitivity of health related information.
PDA framed the engagement around the principle that a plan built with the provinces is a plan built to work, positioning co-creation not as a single stage in policy development but as the entire method behind the Digital Sectoral Plan for health. This approach reflects PDA’s broader strategy of building sectoral plans through direct provincial consultation, ensuring that what eventually reaches national scale has already been tested and refined at the grassroots level across Pakistan’s provinces.
Following the meeting, PDA said it will continue engaging provincial stakeholders to refine the Digital Sectoral Plan so that it reflects the priorities and needs of Pakistan’s health system. The engagement with Sindh adds to PDA’s ongoing effort to coordinate digital health policy across federal and provincial institutions, recognizing that health service delivery in Pakistan is heavily decentralized and that meaningful digital transformation in the sector requires buy-in and infrastructure readiness at the provincial level before broader national implementation can succeed.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.
