As we enter a new year, we look back on 2025 with deep gratitude for our partners, colleagues, and a community of policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and innovators who continued to prove that progress in health systems is built through shared purpose and sustained collaboration.
Over the past year, ACCESS Health International strengthened its work at the intersection of health system strengthening, health security, and resilience, guided by the One Health and Whole of Systems approaches. These lenses helped us move beyond siloed “building blocks” and instead focus on what ultimately mattered most: how people experienced care, how institutions coordinated across levels, and how evidence translated into governance decisions, financing choices, and operational routines.
From access to outcomes: care coordination as a health systems imperative
One of the clearest lessons of 2025 was this: uncoordinated care is a luxury health systems can no longer afford. Whether in public purchasing systems, public provider networks, or integrated private models, fragmentation continued to drive avoidable cost, inconsistent quality, and poor continuity, especially as countries face rising NCD burdens, aging populations, workforce constraints, and limited fiscal space.
Our work therefore leaned into care coordination as a core design principle, supported by people, workflows, and a digital backbone that strengthened continuity of information, clinical decision-making, and accountability.
In Uttar Pradesh, where ACCESS Health has served as a technical partner to the State Health Agency implementing PM-JAY, we helped advance a shift from “coverage on paper” to citizen-first access with guidance and support. On the seventh anniversary of Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY in the state, we were proud to support the launch of three digital innovations that reflected this direction. These were steps toward a more accountable system where citizens could find the right service, receive navigation support, and experience the scheme with greater dignity and ease.
Digital transformation: from “digital projects” to a digital backbone
Across settings, we saw that digital transformation worked best when it was treated not as a standalone project, but as core infrastructure that tied platforms together around the person’s journey and the system’s goals.
In 2025, this commitment was recognized when our ABDM Wrapper was awarded 1st Runner-Up at the CII WR Health Innovation Awards (Best MedTech/Health Tech Innovation) and was also listed as a certified product under the ABDM Connector category on the website of India’s National Health Authority. Designed as a Digital Public Good, the Wrapper simplified adoption by reducing integration complexity and enabling faster, more affordable onboarding, without compromising patient safety and privacy.
We also deepened our focus on responsible Health AI. The launch of our publication, “Towards Responsible Health AI in Asia Pacific,” at the AI Policy Summit 2025 in Tokyo reflected a growing regional need: to move beyond enthusiasm toward governance, through risk-based approaches, assurance mechanisms, regulatory capacity, and workforce readiness. AI could strengthen health systems, but only if it earned trust through transparency, safety, and equity.
Evidence that traveled into practice: technology, measurement, and frontline realities
Throughout 2025, we continued to invest in practical evidence, work that strengthened public systems while staying grounded in real-world implementation constraints.
In Odisha, our study with KIIT and Wadhwani AI assessed the accuracy of AI-powered newborn anthropometry, a critical foundation for growth tracking and early intervention. The dissemination workshop convened state leaders and technical stakeholders to explore how such solutions could complement government systems and strengthen newborn care.
At the same time, our work expanded into contexts where geography and logistics shaped care access in profound ways. In Papua New Guinea, where rural and remote populations faced persistent maternal and child health challenges and infectious disease burdens, we initiated a collaboration with Sanofi focused on strengthening integrated delivery and primary care access, beginning with field engagement that anchored design in lived realities.
Leadership and capacity: strengthening the people who strengthen systems
Health systems rose or fell on leadership, management capability, and the ability to coordinate across disciplines and institutions. In Bhutan, we partnered with KGUMSB and MECRIT, supported by Sanofi’s Global Health Unit, with InOrder and KIIT as academic partners, to conduct two batches of a Leadership Training Program for NCD Control and Management in Paro. Senior clinicians and program leaders engaged in a practice-based learning approach, building skills in team leadership, communication, change management, and ethical decision-making, because better NCD outcomes required better leadership systems.
Convening for action: from collaborative learning to coordinated action
The 2025 GLC4HSR Annual Conclave at the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi (March 11–12) reaffirmed why platforms mattered. With wide participation across countries and sectors, the Conclave held focused dialogues on climate and health, surveillance-alert-response, NCD resilience, supply chains, health financing, workforce readiness, disaster-resilient infrastructure, and digital strategies, while keeping a consistent question at the center: what would it take to move from insights to implementation at scale?
This convening power was strengthened further through partnerships—including new strategic MoUs signed in 2025 to advance innovation, capacity building, and digital health research, including collaborations with IKP Knowledge Park and the Koita Centre for Digital Health at Ashoka University.
Looking ahead: what 2026 demands of us
As we enter 2026, the agenda is sharper. We aim to focus on:
- People-centred care coordination and integrated care that improve outcomes, experience, and value and not just service utilization.
- Digital backbone building that enables continuity of information, decision-making, and accountability;interoperable by design and sustainable to operate.
- Responsible Health AI with risk-proportionate governance, robust assurance mechanisms, and workforce readiness, so AI strengthened trust rather than eroding it.
- Leadership and workforce capacity, especially for NCD control and for district-level health system management.
- One Health-aligned resilience, linking health systems with climate adaptation, supply chain preparedness, and community capability.
- Implementation partnerships that translate policy ambition into operational reality, with measurable improvements in quality and equity.
The challenges remain real: constrained developmental finances, polycrises, workforce shortages, quality assurance gaps, an aging population in many settings, and persistent fragmentation across providers and payers. Yet 2025 showed that progress was possible when reforms were approached as systems design with deliberate roles, workflows, governance, financing, and technology working together.
As always, ACCESS Health remains committed to learning with partners and translating that learning into models that could travel across states, countries, and contexts, without losing sight of the central purpose: better health outcomes for people, especially those most at risk of being left behind.
We look forward to working with you in 2026, through partnerships, evidence, and action that strengthened health systems and improved lives.