Google has transferred its Open Health Stack (OHS) code and assets to the Linux Foundation, marking a significant step in expanding community-led development of open-source digital health technologies.
The move will see the creation of the Open Health Stack Software Foundation (OHS-SF), which will serve as a vendor-neutral home for the project and support the development of digital health solutions worldwide.
The Open Health Stack was launched in 2023 through a collaboration between Google Research and the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide developers with open-source tools for building next-generation digital health applications. The initiative was created in response to the fragmented nature of global digital health infrastructure, which continues to limit access to essential healthcare services for an estimated 4.6 billion people, particularly in low-resource settings.
According to Google, the new foundation will provide a community-governed framework for developing the building blocks needed to support digital health innovation. The project has already attracted backing from organisations including the WHO, Anthropic, Microsoft, Endless Health, PATH and regional health networks across Asia and Africa. To support its long-term development, Google.org has committed a $3 million grant to the initiative.
The Open Health Stack Software Foundation will also introduce a governance programme that enables startups, small businesses and developers from around the world to participate directly in decision-making without financial barriers. Google said the approach is intended to encourage broader collaboration and ensure local innovators have a greater role in shaping the future of digital health technologies.
The foundation’s work will focus on three key areas: FHIR Foundations, which extends tools for working with modern healthcare data standards; the Reference Toolkit, designed to reduce the time required to deploy digital health applications across multiple platforms; and AI Commons, which supports collaborative development of safe and effective artificial intelligence solutions for healthcare.
Over the past three years, Open Health Stack-powered solutions have been deployed by technology partners including Argusoft, Ona, IntelliSOFT, IPRD Solutions, KushiBaby and Living Goods across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. These implementations have supported a range of healthcare use cases while helping developers build standards-based digital health applications.
Google said transferring the Open Health Stack to the Linux Foundation ensures the platform’s core technologies remain openly available to developers worldwide, enabling the global community to build the next generation of AI-enabled digital health solutions and improve access to quality healthcare.
