From 7-8 May 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) will host the fourth GATE Summit, under the Global Cooperation on Assistive Technology (GATE) Initiative, and in collaboration with UNICEF.

The summit will bring together key stakeholders to highlight and prioritise global, regional, and national actions needed to accelerate equitable access to assistive technology.

Taking place at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the GATE Summit 2025 is a hybrid event. In-person attendance is through invite only. Remote participation will be open to all through approved registration. Registration links will be added to this page.

The GATE Summit 2025 will build on progress in the sector with the overall goal of collaboration within and between sectors and partners to achieve a consensus-driven global roadmap for priority investment and action that will accelerate equitable access to assistive technology.

Additionally, the summit will utilise and reference the WHO-GATE 5P framework (People, Policy, Products, Provision, and Personnel), the 10 recommendations from the WHO and UNICEF ‘Global report on assistive technology’, and three over-arching questions.

These questions are:

1. Who needs assistive technology: Who is being left behind, and what are the needs of different assistive technology users, including older persons, children, persons with disabilities, and people with health conditions?
2. Where assistive technology is provided: What specific approaches may be required to address differences in context, such as humanitarian, rural vs urban, and resource-constrained settings?
3. How access can be accelerated: What innovative and novel ways are there to improve access, and in particular what is the potential of digital technologies to overcome persistent barriers to access?

WHO and UNICEF’s global report identifies that 2.5 billion people globally need assistive technology, growing to 3.5 billion by 2050. Equitable access to assistive technology enables better health outcomes, and realisation of human rights, and facilitates collective and inclusive achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Despite the need and benefits, there is significant global inequity of access to quality, affordable assistive products and services needed to ensure they match a person’s needs.

Household surveys conducted for the report found that in some low-income countries, as few as three percent of people have the assistive products they need. More than 67 percent of people accessed their products through shops through out-of-pocket payments. The report also highlights the surge in need during the humanitarian crisis, magnified by a lack of preparedness to respond.

The 2018 World Health Assembly Resolution (71.8) on assistive technology, followed by the global report in 2022 and other global initiatives, have increased awareness and interest in assistive technology as a key issue within health, education, labour, humanitarian, and other sectors.

WHO says that progress has been made towards closing the gaps in access, including increasingly comprehensive global guidance and country-level actions. However, the pace of progress, in particular for low- and middle-income countries, remains slow in contrast to the growing need. There also remains a lack of understanding among decisionmakers and advocates on how to achieve effective access for diverse groups of service users across varied contexts and on the potential of emerging opportunities such as digital health technology.

The objective of the GATE Summit 2025 is to heighten awareness of the need for assistive technology and build shared knowledge of strategies to improve access, considering the themes of who, where, and how, through presenting evidence-based information and best practice examples of national, regional, and global initiatives.

Another objective of the summit is to broaden the network of stakeholders across sectors and levels that are actively engaged in taking action to increase access to assistive technology, through using a hybrid approach and ensuring at least 40 percent of in-person participants are attending a GATE Summit for the first time.

A further objective is to strengthen partnership and collaboration on assistive technology between Member States, UN, civil society, and other key stakeholders, by providing an open forum for sharing ideas and opportunities.

The final objective is to reach consensus on a global road map for accelerating access to assistive technology.