Esteemed colleagues from WHO and other partners organizations,
Distinguished participants,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to open this WSIS session on the second phase of ‘Be He@lthy Be Mobile’,
a joint initiative between ITU and the World Health Organization.
Noncommunicable diseases remain one of the most urgent global development and health challenges. They account for more than 43 million deaths each year, including around 18 million premature deaths before the age of 70. The impact is disproportionately felt in low- and middle-income countries,
where health systems face structural constraints in prevention, early detection and long-term care.
Digital has a role to play in overcoming these constraints,
but many digital health initiatives are fragmented, pilot-driven and difficult to sustain at scale, limiting their contribution to real system transformation.
This is where Be He@lthy Be Mobile has proved invaluable.
Over the past 14 years, the initiative has demonstrated how mobile technology can be used effectively for public health at scale, reaching over 4 million people through national preventive health and behavior change programs, and contributing to digital health awareness and risk communication efforts that have engaged more than 35 million people, while working with more than 50 partners.
The next phase is to embed these proven approaches into national Digital Public Infrastructure, enabling countries to move from isolated digital health interventions to integrated, AI-enabled systems to support prevention, early intervention and continuity of care.
BHBM 2.0 reflects the broader shift we are seeing across the development landscape. It integrates agentic and augmented AI into national health stacks, allowing countries to unlock more proactive and personalised approaches to noncommunicable disease prevention.
Crucially, it is technology neutral. It consolidates existing assets and knowledge into an augmented framework, while maintaining ITU technical leadership. It is architected with a citizen-centric approach. It provides a safe environment for Member States to design, test, validate and scale digital health and related services.
As such, it serves as a core component of our Digital Public Infrastructure product toolbox, and it remains flexible and elastic, adapting to different country contexts, maturity levels and implementation needs.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not only about technology innovation.
It is about ensuring that digital transformation translates into real, inclusive and scalable development outcomes, including health outcomes.
I look forward to the discussion, and to continued collaboration with partners, to ensure that Digital Public Infrastructure becomes a practical enabler of better health outcomes for all.
I would like to challenge ourselves and see how we could also integrate AI in this effort and also expand to see how we could leverage AI and big data to address the challenge brought by epidemics.
Thank you!
