The Trojan Horse: Digital Health, Human Rights, and Global Health Governance

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has massively accelerated a global shift toward new digital technologies in health, a trend underway before the crisis. In response to the pandemic, many countries are rapidly scaling up the use of new digital tools and artificial intelligence (AI) for tasks ranging from digital contact tracing, to diagnosis, to health information management, to the prediction of future outbreaks. This shift is taking place with the active support of numerous private actors and public actors. In particular, United Nations (UN) development agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), are actively encouraging this trend through normative guidance and technical cooperation aimed at helping the governments of low- and middle-income countries to assess their needs for digital health, develop national digital health strategies, and scale up digital interventions.1 At the same time, global health financing agencies, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, are financing these technologies through aid to national health programs and through their own public-private partnerships.