Consultant - Digital Primary Care Assessment

Background

Partners In Health (PIH) is a global health and social justice non‑governmental organization. PIH's mission is to provide preferential options for impoverished people in health care. Over the past three decades, PIH, along with Ministries of Health and other partners, has contributed to embedding key innovations into health systems: improving community health systems and mainstreaming paid community health workers; leveraging vertical investments such as in HIV to improve chronic disease care more broadly;

strengthening national ownership of health information systems; and normalizing universal health coverage as a goal. Despite that progress, primary care still under‑delivers for people in impoverished communities with the collapse of global health aid, further stressing primary care systems. Meanwhile, the pace of technological change continues to accelerate with the advent of artificial intelligence, but PIH sees a widening relevance gap between these advances and the settings where PIH works.

To navigate these crossroads, PIH seeks to strengthen its digital health approach to rural and community‑based primary care, enabling the organization to demonstrate the feasibility and impact of new digital innovations to deliver primary care, particularly in rural contexts.

This Request serves as a competitive process to identify a Consultant (an individual or a firm) to assess the requirements for a pragmatic integration of a digital health platform into primary health care at Partners In Health care delivery sites, as well as to develop multiple scenarios for where and how Partners In Health could initiate its implementation with a focus on rural and community‑based primary care.

• Readiness Assessment: develop a value chain framework for digital health and primary care at PIH, including a mapping of the “5S” components (staff, stuff, spaces, systems, and social support) required for digital health readiness along that chain as the basis of basic and deep‑dive assessments with care delivery sites.
• Map existing digital health and primary care models and tools against key criteria for potential applicability for PIH site contexts.
• Document relevant government policies, digital health strategies, regulatory considerations, and national platforms within each PIH partner country.
• Conduct a high‑level readiness assessment with all PIH care delivery sites, using desk research and internal interviews to assess existing digital infrastructure, mobile phone access, patient and provider trust in digital health, and barriers and enablers to integrate digital workflows.
• Complete deeper assessments of the opportunities and investment needs for effective implementation of a digital health in primary care transformation at three PIH care delivery sites (likely Malawi, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) according to the “5S” model.
• Scenario Development: develop scenarios for transforming the use of digital health in primary care at PIH over the next ~5‑10 years, including assessments of investment requirements, impact potential, risks, and potential partnerships.
• As part of those scenarios, create specific recommendations around needed efforts in the next 1‑3 years to pilot new solutions and/or address underlying constraints.
• As needed, support the presentation of findings to PIH leadership and key stakeholders, and iterate on findings based on feedback.

We are seeking an individual or firm who can work in a deeply collaborative way, providing overall project management support as well as technical expertise that augments internal capabilities. The ideal consultant will have technical depth on digital health, including uses of artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on rural contexts in low‑income countries. The consultant will ideally also have experience supporting processes that are jointly executed alongside client teams.

As part of this effort, PIH will establish a Core Team of 5‑6 individuals who will make hands‑on contributions to the analysis and recommendations, as well as a broader Steering Group to provide regular guidance on project direction. We…