HR Information Systems

Showing Results in Health Workforce Strengthening

Crystal NgOpportunities to spend time with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) colleagues from other organizations are infrequent, yet they provide a valuable way to share knowledge and ideas. Recently, I attended a meeting of the USAID Bureau of Global Health Cooperating Agencies’ M&E Working Group. The meeting convened two USAID deputy assistant administrators, senior leadership from several Bureau of Global Health offices, and dozens of M&E staff from USAID-funded projects.

The meeting's objectives were to share updates on the Global Health Initiative (GHI) and the GHI’s best practices strategy (BEST) to discuss M&E technical issues. Not only was I impressed with the active participation of USAID leadership and their emphasis on the need for research and evaluation, but I was also interested to hear their views on the role of human resources for health (HRH) and M&E in implementing the GHI. Here’s what I took away from the day. Read more »

“With Technical Support You Learn to Fish”

Sarah DwyerWorking on the CapacityPlus project, I’m always excited to see capacity-building in action and hear how local leaders are strengthening the health workforce. Recently I learned about a terrific story from West Africa and wanted to help share it.

Building local ability to gather and use data
At the Health Information System Unconference in Accra, CapacityPlus’s Dykki Settle interviewed Kayode Odusote of the West African Health Organization (WAHO). Professor Odusote is helping WAHO’s member countries gather and use health worker data to make decisions about the health workforce.

In this piece from the CapacityPlus Voices series, Professor Odusote talks about a successful pilot in Ghana using iHRIS software. He emphasizes that the capacity-building aspect of WAHO’s partnership with our project is really what he values. “It’s a technical partnership,” he points out, “and basically for me that is much more than money. If you can build a core nucleus of local capacity,” he says, that has everything to do with sustainability. Read more »

Collaboration with Ugandan Students Expands Reach of Software Systems in the Health Sector

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Interns discuss HRIS data cleaning approachesWorking in the field of global health we often hear about the global health workforce shortage: we don’t have enough doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, community health workers in developing countries. This is true, but what we hear less about is how we manage and support the people we do have, which is also crucial and one of the main charges of the Uganda Capacity Program.

One way the Uganda Capacity Program is helping to manage and support the current health workforce is through the development and rollout of the iHRIS software suite, an Open Source software solution developed under the USAID-funded and IntraHealth-led Capacity Project. Read more »

iHRIS in Kenya—The Key to Long-Term Sustainability

Brooke BuchananThe human resources information system (HRIS) implementation team for Capacity Kenya has championed the use of iHRIS software in Kenya. Because of their efforts we are excited to soon have a fully integrated system for human resources for health policy, planning, and management throughout the country.

Dr. Samwel Wakibi is now collaborating with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation to ensure all human resources data for hiring, transferring, and retiring health workers are electronically entered into iHRIS by the Complement Section—the part the Human Resources Division within the Ministry of Health that handles all status changes for employed health workers, then sends these change orders to the Ministry of Public Service and then on to payroll. Read more »

Building Local Health Systems with Information Systems

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

HRIS in IndiaOn my trip to India last month, I didn’t plan to focus on maternal health care, but walking through the maternity ward in Bihar, I couldn’t help but worry about the long lines and hours that keep a woman waiting to see a doctor. The health officials I met with are incredibly committed to serving their communities. In one case, I actually had to walk through the maternity ward to reach my meeting with members of the chief surgeon’s office and the head of district medicine. I realized these men and women walk by the patients every day—women like the proud new mother who urged me to come over and take a photograph of her new daughter. Although the hospital I was in is among the nicest in the state, it lacks many of the essential information systems that can make a health system run efficiently and effectively. In practical terms, this might mean the women I walked by would not have to spend so long waiting to be seen. Read more »

Developer to Developer: Creating a Regional Support Network at the Unconference

Read about the first days of the Unconference.

Carl Leitner at the unconference, GhanaClosing the iHRIS track on Tuesday, CapacityPlus staff Dykki Settle asked how many of the participants were excited to come back tomorrow. In reply, the 25 participants—from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Togo, and more—including human resources (HR) managers, information technology staff, and HR directors—universally and sincerely expressed their enthusiasm for the Training Workshop/Unconference for Interoperable Applications for Health Information Systems. As this is a western African regional conference, both French and English speakers were present. Many thanks to Romain Tohouri who provided excellent translation to and from French on technical areas such as HR and software development, as well as health sector terminology. Read more »

The Digital Nomad: Blogging from the Health Information Systems Unconference

Carl Leitner's badgePacked and ready to collaborate
In my suitcase there are two iHRIS Appliances, a host of books donated by O'Reilly, and several large printouts of the form maps for iHRIS Manage and iHRIS Qualify. I’m a digital nomad, I say to myself, looking at my backpack full of electronic knick-knacks that will help smooth over any technical hiccups we may encounter during the Training Workshop/Unconference for Interoperable Applications for Health Information Systems. Held in Accra, Ghana, most participants are from the Economic Community of West African States, with several iHRIS developers from Botswana and Lesotho as well. Read more »

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