Architects of Digital Health
A new Minister of Health has just pulled you onto the Digital Health Task Force. Your job: coordinate the country's fragmented digital health systems into one national architecture that can withstand any shock. The board game built into DH:PNS, playable in cohorts around a table, or right here in your browser.
The lite version, in your browser.
A single-team digital adaptation of the real rules, played on the real board: four actions a round, then a shock, a severity, and an outside investor. Build systems across the four disease areas and connect them before five health system failures pile up. Each level is its own cycle: place the same system in all four areas, interoperate to lock that ring, then repeat at district and national.
Lite adaptation of the tabletop rules. Place the same system type in all four disease areas at pilot level, then interoperate to lock the pilot ring. To reach district, place four new systems of that type at the district circle and interoperate again, then repeat at national. Each ring is earned by placing four and connecting, not by scaling a single piece. Interoperated systems protect every area at the ring's level. Duplicated systems (two overlapping hexagons) must be defragmented before that level can interoperate.
Build a health system that can withstand anything.
Teams work collaboratively to build a digital health enterprise architecture across four disease areas... Cholera, Malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDS... using four types of software systems. Each round you choose four actions: add systems, defragment duplicates, scale from pilot to district to national, invest in interoperability, or bank governance.
Then the world happens. A shock card hits a disease area, a severity card sets how high the bar is, and an outside investor drops new software into your ecosystem, whether it fits your plan or not. Withstand every shock before five health system failures pile up, and you win.
Created by Merrick Schaefer & Nick Martin · developed with USAID, WHO, ITU, TechChange & Digital Square
The pieces.
Software System Tokens
Four types: Messaging, Community Information, Medical Records, and Training/Learning, the technologies your team deploys.
Interoperability Rings
Placed when you connect software of the same type across disease areas into a common architecture. They stack as you scale.
Shock Cards
Power failures, outbreaks, fires, malware. Each shock tests a specific software type in a specific disease area.
Severity Cards
Sets the level of the shock: pilot, district, or national. Your defenses have to be scaled at least that high.
Outside Investor Cards
New money arrives every round, on the investor's terms. It can strengthen your architecture or fragment it further.
Governance Tokens
Invest in governance ahead of time to redirect outside investments toward your priorities. Coordination, as a game mechanic.
Watch a live session.
A walkthrough of the game in action with a real cohort.
The pedagogy, disguised as play.
Every mechanic maps to a real planning concept from the course: fragmentation is duplicated software you must defragment before you can scale; interoperability is the only durable defense; governance converts outside money from a risk into a resource. Cohorts feel the enterprise planning approach before they're taught the vocabulary for it.
Fragmentation, felt
Donor-driven investor cards keep dropping duplicate pilots into your ecosystem, exactly the dynamic real planners face.
Interoperability wins
A single system only ever holds at pilot. Connecting the same type across all four areas is the only way to scale protection to district and national. The math of the game teaches the thesis of the course.
Governance pays off
Investing an action in governance seems wasteful, until it lets you steer the next investment to where the system actually needs it.