From eVIN to SMILE: How South–South Cooperation is transforming Health Systems

I first met Febri in 2018, when he was serving as the Vaccine Cold Chain Manager in Indonesia. At the time, UNDP Indonesia was working closely with UNDP India to learn from India's pioneering experience with the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) and to adapt it into a new initiative-SMILE (Sistem Monitoring Imunisasi dan Logistik secara Elektronik).

Both eVIN and SMILE are vaccine management systems that streamline the entire supply chain, transforming how vaccines are received, stored, and delivered all the way to the last mile.

Febri was both excited and curious. How could a simple, easy-to-use mobile application help ensure equitable access to vaccines, reduce wastage, prevent stock-outs, and streamline distribution? The answer lay not only in the power of digitalization, but also in the power of sharing knowledge across borders.

eVIN and SMILE: Global Case Studies of South-South Cooperation

The journeys of eVIN in India and SMILE in Indonesia are now celebrated as global case studies in digital health. They show how South-South cooperation can address common health priorities by:

• Facilitating knowledge exchange between countries facing similar challenges.

• Promoting joint approaches tailored to local contexts.

• Enabling countries to capitalize on tested solutions, saving time and resources.

• Strengthening regional solidarity by building networks of experts and practitioners and

• Demonstrating the value of scaling innovations across geographies rather than reinventing the wheel.

Through this cooperation, digital health tools were not just replicated, but thoughtfully adapted and fully institutionalized, ensuring lasting ownership by national governments.

Scaling Digital Health Innovations in India

By 2020, eVIN had been scaled nationwide in India, covering more than 29,000 health facilities and becoming the backbone of vaccine logistics. Along with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, UNDP ensured training of over a million healthcare workers, most of them women, empowering them with skills that helped them navigate digital technologies like eVIN and more. eVIN's success became the springboard for:

• Co-WIN - the platform that registered over 1.2 billion beneficiaries and tracked more than 2.4 billion doses during India's COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

• U-WIN - the world's largest electronic immunization registry, now tracking over 100 million pregnant women and children.

• TB-WIN - designed to monitor adult TB vaccination drives.

• AVIN - managing animal vaccine supply chains.

• Zoo-WIN - supporting surveillance and response for zoonotic diseases such as rabies and snakebites.

Together, these platforms demonstrate how one successful innovation can evolve into a stack of digital public goods, tackling diverse health challenges across sectors.

Taking Lessons Global

Building on these experiences, UNDP India has supported several countries-including Sudan, Malawi, and Afghanistan-in designing and adapting similar digital health systems.

In Malawi, eVIN and CoWIN-inspired systems have improved stock visibility, reduced wastage, and even streamlined appointment scheduling. For a country where vaccine access is often hampered by geography and limited infrastructure, these improvements are game-changing. In the case of Sudan and Afghanistan, both countries have adapted digital systems to strengthen cold chain monitoring and coordinate COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, despite complex environments.

In each case, India's leadership, combined with UNDP's facilitation, has created a practical pathway for countries to learn from one another and leapfrog challenges without starting from scratch. More recently, under the UNSDG Fund, a joint collaboration between the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and UNDP India was launched to bring the learnings from eVIN and U-WIN to Zambia and Lao PDR.

These partnerships are helping countries harness digital public goods to strengthen health systems, improve efficiency, and ensure that no one is left behind.

Full Circle with SMILE

When I met Febri again in 2022, he had transformed. Once a curious learner, he had become a master trainer and a key resource person for SMILE-now fully institutionalized by Indonesia's Ministry of Health. What began as a simple adaptation of eVIN had evolved into a nationwide backbone of health logistics.

By then, SMILE was tracking far more than vaccines. It monitored medicines for tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria; supported immunization routines; managed rabies vaccines; oversaw Health Care Medical Waste (HCMW); and ensured the availability of essential medical supplies. This expansion meant that millions of Indonesians-from bustling cities to the most remote islands-now had more reliable access to lifesaving commodities.

Equally important, SMILE has helped nurture a new generation of digital health leaders. Women are at the forefront of this transformation-making up 57% of the workforce driving SMILE's success. Every day, they ensure stock availability, prevent wastage, monitor cold chains, and keep lifesaving medicines flowing through the system. Their leadership is a powerful reminder that digital transformation is not just about technology, but about empowering people and strengthening health systems from the ground up.

Indonesia is not only strengthening its own health system but is also ready to share this model with the world.

This full-circle moment captures the true power of South-South cooperation: countries learning from one another, adapting proven solutions, and then paying it forward. It is not just about transferring technology-it is about building confidence, ownership, and resilience in health systems across the globe.

Blog by Abhimanyu Saxena, Unit Head, Health Systems Strengthening, UNDP India.