By: Tyrone Bird
In global healthcare, digital initiatives often struggle to move beyond initial testing phases. The Movement Health Foundation leads the transformation of healthcare delivery by successfully expanding digital solutions from Latin America to Africa and Europe. Rather than letting promising pilot programs stagnate, the foundation has developed effective methods to implement and scale healthcare advancements, particularly in addressing cardiovascular disease and cancer treatment in middle and low-income countries.
Changing Healthcare Through Digital Advancement
Salud 360, Movement Health Foundation’s key pilot program, paved the way for significant changes in Colombian healthcare. The initiative addressed a critical gap: while doctors treated 5.3 million patients for heart disease, another 2.2 million people needed care but remained undiagnosed. The pilot operated within Colombia’s modern healthcare laws, specifically Law 2015 of 2020, which enabled smooth integration of medical records across different systems.
The pilot program coordinated healthcare providers through a comprehensive approach that facilitated cardiovascular risk management, strengthened patient adherence, and optimized clinical cost management through integrated hospital information systems. This approach delivered impressive results: for the 1,790 patients in the pilot at Hospital de Baranoa, Atlántico, healthcare and maintenance costs were reduced by up to 50%, cardiovascular risk management expenses decreased by 20.5%, and control test costs dropped by 24.4% through systematic patient monitoring.
Following this success, one of the six participating digital health entrepreneurs, Delfos, secured Colombian government funding to expand the solution to Putumayo. This successful transition from pilot to scaled implementation demonstrates Movement Health Foundation’s ability to champion sustainable healthcare advancements that attract government support for broader implementation.
Strategic Implementation and Scaling
Movement Health follows a clear three-step plan to grow its healthcare solutions. It started small in Baranoa, Atlántico, where it helped 1,790 patients. Now, it has grown bigger in Putumayo, working with six hospitals to reach 350,000 people. Over 30,000 of these people have already been onboarded into the platform. Next year, it will expand to rural and semi-rural vulnerable areas across Colombia, where many migrants live. This step-by-step growth shows how it turns small successes into larger programs that help more people.
The foundation implements this methodical expansion through its dynamic six-step approach. It begins by identifying major health challenges and establishing data-sharing frameworks, then engages with regional decision-makers to define problem areas. The team builds local networks by fostering collaborations with existing healthcare infrastructure, drives policy shifts to create sustainable healthcare policies, launches targeted pilots through open innovation, and finally scales successful solutions globally.
Building Global Healthcare Ecosystems
Movement Health creates sustainable healthcare ecosystems by partnering with over 40 global organizations. This collaborative framework integrates digital health solutions deeply into existing healthcare systems while appropriate policy frameworks and local knowledge support implementation.
The foundation actively implements initiatives across multiple countries, including Algeria, Bulgaria, Ghana, and South Africa. Each regional program addresses specific healthcare challenges while maintaining a focus on scaling digital innovations. In Africa, Movement Health prioritizes women’s health and care provision; in Europe, they advance disease prevention and digital infrastructure; and in Latin America, they strengthen healthcare systems by scaling digital solutions in data governance, oncology care, and chronic disease management to expand access and improve patient outcomes.
Expanding Interoperability and Enhancing Data Solutions
The success of Salud 360’s approach to interoperability in 2022 laid the groundwork for sustainable healthcare advancement. Building on this foundation, Delfos—one of the pilot’s participating solutions—now manages data from various health institutions at the territorial level with support from the Colombian government. The platform captures, integrates, cleans, and organizes information in a standardized way, driving interoperability between systems with decentralized data. This systematic approach delivers structured information that empowers patients, health professionals, and decision-makers.
Movement Health Foundation’s pilot program demonstrated that transforming healthcare systems demands a comprehensive approach that can attract government support for scaling successful solutions. The transition of Salud 360’s innovative concepts into Delfos’ full-scale implementation, supported by 4.571 billion Colombian pesos from the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications, showcases how pilot programs can evolve into sustainable, government-backed healthcare solutions.
As Movement Health Foundation expands its reach across continents, this model of piloting, proving, and passing on successful advancements continues to create new possibilities for achieving equitable healthcare access through scalable digital solutions.
Published by Charlie N.
