The Global Digital Collaboration Conference 2026 will bring together government, international organizations, technical experts and private-sector partners to advance collaboration on trusted digital systems and cross-border digital solutions. A key focus will be the development of secure, portable and trusted digital health wallets, including the governance, technology, standards and partnerships needed to enable verified health information to move securely with individuals across health facilities and borders.
As a co-organizer of the conference, WHO will contribute its expertise on digital health standards, interoperability and trust frameworks, and share country experiences and practical approaches to building a trusted global digital health ecosystem.
WHO on the agenda
Day 1 | 1 September | 12:20–12:40| Plenary, ABC Room
Advancing Global Digital Health Wallets: Secure. Portable. Yours.
As health records become increasingly digital, a critical gap remains: ensuring health information is secure, portable and trusted when people move between clinics, districts and countries.
Over the past two decades, the global shift from paper-based to digital health records has been vital for strengthening health systems. Yet, a critical gap remains: ensuring this information is universally secure, portable, and trusted. Today, when a person moves - between clinics, between districts, between countries - their health information rarely moves with them. At the World Health Organisation, we believe in a future where individuals are empowered to securely hold and share their verified health data. Join Alain Labrique, Director of the Department of Data, Digital Health, Analytics and AI from WHO, alongside senior leadership from across Ministries of Health and Private Sector partners, to share how they are already working together to provide trust frameworks for cross-border verification - a system in which credentials can be verified by any authorised provider, anywhere in the world, without WHO or any intermediary ever holding the underlying patient data - and the governance, technology and partnerships necessary to scale these solutions worldwide. We invite you to join us in co-developing a trusted global digital health ecosystem that leaves no one behind.Speakers: Alain Labrique (Director, Dept of Data, Digital Health, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, World Health Organization), Alan Stapelberg (Group Product Manager, Google), Marcelo D’Agostino (Unit Chief, Information Systems and Digital Health, Pan American Health Organization), Jamal Alshanfari (Ambassador, Health Affairs, Sultanate of Oman)
Session co-organized by WHO
Day 2 | 2 September | 10:00–10:50 | ABC Room
Quality Assured Health Wallets: Real-World Use Cases
Building a secure, portable and trusted digital health ecosystem requires moving from high-level design to practical quality assurance. With WHO’s Global Digital Health Certification Network (GDHCN) already connecting over 80 countries and nearly 2 billion people, the next step is to learn from real-world country experiences and use cases.
Join technical architects and regional implementers for a deep dive into the operational realities of deploying interoperable trust networks at the national level. This session will dissect reference architectures, conformance testing frameworks, and practical deployment learnings from active regional testbeds to show exactly what is required to make quality-assuring digital health wallets functional, scalable, and universally trusted.Speakers: Carl Leitner (World Health Organization), Carlos Nuñez RACSEL, Joyce Wamicwe, Dr Nitchanund Tantisirivit (Ministry of Public Health Thailand), Pablo Arribas (Digital ID Solution Architect, UNICC - United Nations International Computing Centre), Dr Konstantin Hyppönen (European Commission)
Session co-organized by WHO and UNICC
Day 2 | 2 September | 16:00 – 16:50 | Room G
Exploring Real-World Interoperability: Health Credentials in Digital Wallets
Accelerated by the pandemic, public health systems are leveraging verifiable credentials (VCs) to enhance cross-border mobility and health workforce management. While the decentralized VC model offers unprecedented flexibility, that very flexibility introduces great operational complexity. Because the entities defining health specifications (like the WHO) and those building digital wallets (commercial tech giants, government software vendors, and open-source communities) operate independently, alignment is rarely automatic. Compounding this challenge, different regions and sectors adopt different standards, such as W3C Verifiable Credentials or ISO mDocs for the same health use cases.
This session tackles the governance and implementation friction created by this fragmentation. Grounded in real-world deployment cases, including routine immunization records, provider credentials, and professional certifications, speakers will explore how public health systems can navigate diverse standards and build practical alignment with wallet providers and credential verifiers operating outside the health sector's jurisdiction.
Speakers: Carl Leitner (World Health Organization), Sharon Leu (California Career Passport), Arjan Geluk (Co-Founder, A4Advisory), Ramesh Narayanan (MOSIP),Lucy Yang (Independent Expert)
Session co-organized by WHO, DPI Group: Aapti Institute, Interledger Foundation, MOSIP, Networks for Humanity