Digital health discourses in global health: Varieties of techno-optimist depoliticisation

Digitalisation in health introduces new actors, risks, and challenges into health governance. Global health institutions such as World Bank, World Health Organisation, and the now-disbanded US Agency for International Development play a central role in shaping how governments navigate this evolving technical terrain. This paper examines digital health discourses of these organisations in the early 2020s, asking why, how, and by whom digital health is promoted. Using Political Discourse Analysis, we study three flagship documents, selected from 72. Our analysis shows that these organisations engage in depoliticisation, portraying digital health as an inevitable wave that governments must adopt rapidly and extensively. This techno-optimist framing overlooks government capacity gaps concerning the complexity of strategic adoption and asymmetric power relations with technology providers, and the absence of political engagement with risks and challenges. These discourses foster a depoliticised vision of digital health, overlooking the political mechanisms for digitalisation to benefit the public.