This document summarizes discussions from the first three days of a workshop on local health systems in Cotonou. It shows the various actors in a local health system and solutions reviewed to improve information flow and coordination. Two observations are that solutions scaled at the central level but lack inclusion of local actors, while point-of-care solutions grew through horizontal sharing but not scale. Key questions are how to better involve district management teams and increase connections between actors, and how to accelerate diffusion of solutions for both providers and users. An emerging framework emphasizes designing information solutions around a health system, people, context and technology to collect, analyze, share and improve data.