A Brief History
What began as a one-day summit about mobile phones has become the global meeting point for digital health. GDHF has grown alongside the field it serves, and its story has always been written by its community.
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2009–2010
The spark
The first mHealth Summit took place in 2009 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC: one day, a handful of panels, and a then-radical idea that mobile phones could transform health in underserved communities. Organized with the Foundation for the NIH and the newly formed mHealth Alliance, it was global from the start, with funding raised to bring participants from Asia and Africa. The same year, the mHealth Working Group was founded, the network that would become GDHN. By 2010 the Summit had moved to the Washington Convention Center, with Bill Gates and Ted Turner on the main stage.
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2011–2013
Growing up fast
The Summit moved to the Gaylord National Resort in National Harbor, Maryland, and grew to thousands of attendees after HIMSS took over the brand. Global health sessions now sat alongside the much larger health IT industry. These were the years of landmark efforts like the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, and of a field moving from pilots toward evidence. By the end of this era, the global digital health community had begun to feel it needed a home of its own.
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2014
The first Global mHealth Forum
As “mHealth” gave way to the broader idea of digital health, the first Global mHealth Forum launched in December 2014, still co-located with the HIMSS mHealth Summit. Coordinated by the mHealth Working Group with a steering committee of 12 partner organizations, it brought together more than 550 participants from 50 countries across 28 sessions in 7 tracks.
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2015–2019
Standing on its own
In 2015 the Forum became the Global Digital Health Forum, independent of HIMSS and anchored by the Global Digital Health Network, as the mHealth Working Group was now known. Early standalone editions filled the FHI 360 Conference Center in Washington, DC, every December. As the community grew, GDHF moved to larger venues in the Washington area, including the Bethesda North Marriott, drawing 700+ participants and a widening mix of ministries, donors, startups, and implementers. It became a place where pilots were debated, failures were shared openly at the much-loved Fail Festivals, and collaborations and careers were launched.
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2020–2021
Going virtual
When the pandemic arrived, the Forum went fully virtual for the first time in partnership with TechChange, welcoming more than 4,000 participants online for hundreds of sessions in a 3D virtual convention experience. As the global health community raced to respond to COVID-19, GDHF became a vital place to share what was working. A second virtual edition of similar scale followed in 2021.
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2022–2023
Back together, and hybrid
In 2022 the community reunited in person in Crystal City, Virginia. In 2023 GDHF grew into one of its largest editions yet, with more than 700 people on site at the Bethesda North Marriott and several thousand more joining online, proving the Forum could convene its global community wherever they were.
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2024–2025
Nairobi
GDHF crossed to the African continent for the first time, welcoming close to 1,300 participants to Nairobi in 2024, with more than half from across Africa and a quarter from Kenya itself. A second Nairobi edition in 2025 drew over 900 participants in person and several thousand online. That it thrived in a year of real headwinds for global health was a testament to the strength of this community.
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2026
Asia
In December 2026, GDHF comes to Asia for the first time. Hosted in Bangkok and co-hosted by Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health with the support of WHO Thailand, this is the next chapter in a story more than 15 years in the making.
The people who built GDHF tell its story best. TechChange founder Nick Martin is collecting an oral history of the Forum with the community, full of the memories, characters, and moments behind each era. Read along and add your own.
