Key points
- Build on what others have already made.
- Share practical lessons, including what did not work.
- Make useful experience easy to find for the people who can apply it, in government and outside it.
Much of the software the world runs on was built by people building on each other’s work. A developer who needs a database, a mapping library or a way to collect data on a phone rarely writes one from scratch. They find an open-source tool, read how others have used it, adapt it and often send their improvements back. Over the years, that habit has saved the technology industry an enormous amount of time and effort.
Open source does not make anything effortless. A tool still has to be adapted to its setting, connected to other systems, governed and maintained. What it changes is the starting point. Nobody has to begin from zero.
Development and public health can work in a similar way. Governments, development organisations and individual practitioners often come across problems that others have already worked on in another district, state or country. There is room to learn from that experience more systematically, while recognising that solutions usually need to be adapted to local contexts. Many digital tools are now shared openly as digital public goods. The experience around them is shared far less. What worked, what failed, what it cost and what someone would do differently next time usually stays with the people who did the work.
Collecting knowledge and using it
A good deal of that experience does get written down. Projects produce reports, toolkits and compendiums, and many of them end up in online repositories. A repository makes resources available, and that is useful in itself.
A network of people can complement what a repository offers. It can help someone find the resource that fits their problem, understand how it was used in practice and speak to a person who has done it before. A programme officer weighing up a new tool for frontline workers will often learn more from one conversation with someone who has rolled out something similar than from a long report read alone.
A community I have been glad to be part of
One such community is YO.DH, or Youth Ownership of Digital Health, a network initiated by PATH. PATH describes it as a volunteer-led community for digital health professionals aged 35 and under. It was launched in July 2023 with support from the Gates Foundation, in partnership with International Innovation Corps, Digital Square and WomenLift Health.
I have been glad to be part of it. It puts people working on similar problems in different countries in touch with each other and gives them regular chances to share what they are doing. In September 2024, its digest featured a maternal health project I worked on, with an interview with the project’s lead and me about how the team was using digital tools.
What makes knowledge exchange work
Not every network works equally well. From my experience, a few practical conditions seem to make the difference.
A strong secretariat. Someone has to bring people together, keep continuity between meetings, make introductions and see that conversations lead somewhere. A platform or a mailing list on its own does none of this.
Concrete, tested knowledge. A working template, a costed plan or an honest account of what went wrong is worth more than a general talk about innovation, because others can judge it and use it.
Government in the room. When officials responsible for implementation take part directly, ideas meet real needs and constraints early, and it becomes clearer what could actually be adopted.
Room for smaller contributors. Useful work comes from independent professionals and small teams as well as large organisations. A good network makes their tools and lessons easy to discover and assess.
Openness. People should be able to contribute and learn on the strength of their work, whatever their affiliation or the size of their organisation. The aim is to build on each other’s work, whoever did it.
Open-source software showed that a field moves faster when people can see, reuse and improve each other’s work. Development already has a great deal of good work to build on. Networks that help people find relevant work, understand how it was done and apply its lessons can be a worthwhile investment in development practice.
Views are my own.