Across the region with the world's largest burden of disease and the most severe shortage of health-care workers, we see increased use of digital health solutions and interventions for clients, health-care providers, health-system managers, and data services. As the traditional health-care systems are typically ill-equipped, understaffed, or not accessible at all, sub-Saharan Africa is booming with digital health. Also, smartphones usage levels in the region are high, with 39% of all SIM connections in 2018, and an estimated 66% in 2025. The mobile money market of sub-Saharan Africa has become an epicentre, accounting for almost half of all mobile money registered accounts globally.

Despite these promising figures, many people in the region today deal with several real-life barriers to the access of digital health, especially the urban–rural and gender divide, low digital literacy, and shortage of connectivity and electricity.

For digital health interventions to be of benefit to the rural communities and reduce commutation, we have to use implementation strategies with the Community Health Workers (CHWs) as the pillar, assisting Health care professionals (HCPs) to provide necessary services to the populations in the hinterlands.

Therefore, digital health interventions that are intended for use within rural set-ups, should havesome minimum measurable clinical outcome(s) that can be collected by the CHWs and forwarded to the HCPs.

In implementation sciences, context is supreme. Digital health interventions have much to offer towards medicine and healthcare access, but the most successful digital health tools/services will be those designed with purpose to accompany a patient’s evolving goals, competencies, capabilities, and behavior.

The objective of this C-DiHub is to:
1. Create fit-for-purpose frameworks for evaluating digital health innovations to support clinical care decisions and public health policies in Sub-Saharan Africa
2. Develop local expertise to maintain frameworks and ensure sustainability of successful digital health innovation
3. Develop practice guidelines to ensure the safe, effective, ethical, and equitable deployment of digital health technologies by community health workers

To achieve this goal, we have to first and foremost work on a research setting agenda. We hereby invite you to join us and work towards evidence-based implementation of digital health initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa.