2018 DHIS2 Symposium
Schedule
https://dhis2symposium2018.sched.com/
Day 1 (Thursday, March 22)
Plenary presentations
From Container to Content: DHIS 2 as Canal to Foster Convergence, Completeness, Commensurability and Quality
Knut Staring
More guidance on how to actually implement → essentially talking about the DHIS 2 Community of Practice (CoP)
UiO department of informatics WHO collaborating centre: Innovation and implementation research for health information systems strengthening
UiO/HISP/WHO → developing better standardized guidance on dashboards based on WHO recommendations
Health data collaborative
WHO/UiO/USAID MEval, PEPFAR, UNICEF + GFATM & Gavi
Packages
Guidance, packages, essentially an implementer’s guide
Have chosen 6 countries for initial testing: Malawi, Myanmar, Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Packages - Working at WHO HQ Geneva and UiO to come up with the outputs, the minimums that all countries should pay attention to. Trends = immunization, an important indicator is coverage.
Curriculum - system agnostic, can be used with any system.
Exercises - use with the DHIS2 demo database, building a new environment
A package to “get started” with dashboards and all basic indicators/information a country may need
Packages are designed to be generic. Can fit with existing data. Can download just the outputs (dashboards) and link to your own existing legacy data, or you can download the data elements, categories, etc., to fully guide an implementation. Use generic periods, org units, etc.
Thinking is changing at UiO - they now want to provide guidance for streamlining and standardizing the collection and use of data using DHIS2
International Medical Corps asked a question about logistics systems specifically
Knut on LMIS - a very specialized topic and there are excellent systems out there. Generally we’re talking about integration. The strength that DHIS2 has is that it’s present at the health facility level. For the last mile of data collection, sometimes DHIS2 could potentially serve as an intelligence point that feeds back data on usage. Then, could have more sophisticated backbone systems that manage the actual supply chain. Could have more than one system at the last mile, but needs to appear as one system.
Follow up question from IMC: Do you recommend any sort of open source software that can be adopted into pharmacies and link consumption with patient information. OpenMRS?
Knut says that he didn’t emphasize the word community enough (!)
DHIS 2 Interoperability in the Rwanda Health Data Warehouse
Randy Wilson
Rwanda Health Systems Strengthening Project, Team Lead
MSH
Data is fed into the DHIS 2 instance at the central level, which is used as a data warehouse. Reports and indicators are then generated based on data from a variety of sources. Data comes from the Rwanda HMIS (DHIS 2) instance, the DHS, and others, and visualized in the data warehouse instance.
Made a replica of the first instance of RHMIS (DHIS 2), developed a set of sync tools for the metadata.
Structure
Org units
Data elements
Data values
Created indicators
Created analytical objects and dashboards
Metadata mapping scenarios
One to one
Many to one
Created data element groups and IDs
Problem to maintain, but he says it works
Challenges
Org. unit sync → moving between upgrades, sync breaks
Metadata mapping
Linking data elements between instances without a visual interface is tedious and error prone
Current sync script doesn’t update changed/deleted records
Future plans
Update sync scripts to handle updates and deletions in addition to just copying new records each month
Link to WO’s National health Observatory
Build a GUI for mapping metadata from other DHIS 2 instances
Link with eLMIS
80 tracer drugs are pulled from the Rwanda eLMIS instance
Collected by data managers and collected monthly, but now they use an API to pull that data directly from the eLMIS instance
Questions
Attempting to build a data warehouse community in Uganda
What did you need to say to people to convince them that this is a good idea?
Marketing wasn’t difficult, people knew it could be useful.
The issue comes afterward in its use - we’ll give you data but don’t let this person see it.
Open global data index - Rwanda scores high. MOH scores low.