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Aug 8, 2019

Electronic immunization registries in Tanzania and Zambia: Shaping a minimum viable product for scaled solutions

Frontiers in Public Health

Subjects: eHealth, Immunization Registry, People, Policies, Products
Countries: Tanzania, Zambia

As part of the work the BID Initiative undertook starting in 2013 to improve countries’ collection, quality, and use of immunization data, PATH partnered with countries to identify the critical requirements for an electronic immunization registry (EIR). An EIR became the core intervention to address the data challenges that countries faced but also presented complexities during the development process to ensure that it met the core needs of the users. The work began with collecting common system requirements from 10 sub-Saharan African countries; these requirements represented the countries’ vision of an ideal system to track individual child vaccination schedules and elements of supply chain. Through iterative development processes in both Tanzania and Zambia, the common requirements were modified and adapted to better fit the country contexts and users’ needs, as well as to be developed with the technology available at the time. This process happened across four different software platforms. The BID Initiative recently published a paper to Frontiers in Public Health that outlines the process undertaken and analyzes similarities and differences across the iterations of the EIR in both countries, culminating in the development of a registry in Zambia that includes the most critical aspects required for initially deploying the registry and embodies what could be considered the minimum viable product for an EIR. Read the full article in Frontiers in Public Heath.

Download File: pdf (570 KB)

Jul 30, 2019

From fragile to resilient health systems: A journey to self-reliance

Subjects: eHealth, People, Practices
Countries: Global

Preventable disease, emerging infectious disease, extreme weather-related disasters due to urbanization and environmental degradation, and complications of pregnancy and childbirth still claim far too many lives and challenge the ability of health systems to cope. Meanwhile, shrinking investments, flat country health budgets, population pressures, and complex emergencies challenge the global ability to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Some of the world’s experts were convened by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds MEASURE Evaluation, to take on the topic at its conference in Washington, DC, in March 2019 at a meeting, From Fragile to Resilient Health Systems: A Journey to Self-Reliance. The group addressed multiple factors affecting how health systems are able to respond to routine health challenges and emergencies. The full report is available here.

Jun 10, 2019

BID Regional Global Factsheet

Subjects: Packaging, People, Policies, Practices
Countries: Global

Led by PATH, in partnership with the governments of Tanzania and Zambia, the BID Initiative is grounded in the belief that better data, plus better decisions, will lead to better health outcomes. BID was designed to create an environment in which reliable, easily accessed, and actionable data can be used to improve health outcomes. This factsheet summarizes the BID Regional portfolio of work.

May 6, 2019

BLN Webinar: The Data Use Partnership

Subjects: eHealth, eHealth architecture, People, Policies, Practices
Countries: Tanzania

The BID Learning Network invites you to view a webinar presentation on The Data Use Partnership. The use of reliable information from a well-designed health information system is critical for: decision-making during disease outbreaks; enhancing efficiency; fostering innovation; and ultimately ensuring improved health outcomes. To this effect, the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania, with the support of PATH, has been implementing the Data Use Partnership (DUP) under the Ministry of Health’s transformative Digital Health Investment Road Map in health data systems and use. This is intended to close key gaps so that Tanzania can make informed decisions within public health to strengthen health outcomes.

Feb 20, 2019

BLN Webinar: Introducing the BID Learning Network Data Quality and Use Collaborative

Subjects: GAVI, Packaging, People, Policies, Practices
Countries: Global

The BID Learning Network (BLN) invites you to view a webinar presentation on “Introducing the BID Learning Network Data Quality and Use Collaborative.” Since 2014, the BLN has been bringing African countries together through peer learning, to identify and share tested solutions related to data collection, quality, and use.

Feb 20, 2019

A health worker’s journey: Oliver’s life after the BID Initiative

Subjects: Packaging, People, Policies, Practices, Products

Oliver is a nurse in a busy, urban facility. She’d spend hours sifting through dense registry books to find which children were due for vaccination and ensuring she had enough stock. Once kids were immunized, Oliver and her team worked nights and weekends to report to the district. Unfortunately, the data went up, but rarely came back to help Oliver improve services. Through the BID Initiative, Oliver is a connected health worker motivated to use data to make her job easier.

Feb 26, 2019

Redefining vaccination coverage and timeliness measures using electronic immunization registry data in low- and middle-income countries

Vaccine

Subjects: People, Policies, Practices, Products
Countries: Tanzania, Zambia

Vaccine coverage is routinely used as a performance indicator for immunization programs both at local and global levels. For many national immunization programs, there are challenges with accurately estimating vaccination coverage based on available data sources, however an increasing number of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have begun implementing electronic immunization registries to replace health facilities’ paper-based tools and aggregate reporting systems. These systems allow for more efficient capture and use of routinely reported individual-level data that can be used to calculate dose-specific and cohort vaccination coverage, replacing the commonly used aggregate routine health information system data. With these individual-level data immunization programs have the opportunity to redefine performance measures to enhance programmatic decision-making at all levels of the health system. In this commentary, we discuss how measures for assessing vaccination status and program performance can be redefined and recalculated using these data when generated at the health facility level and the implications of the use and availability of electronic individual-level data. Read the full article in Vaccine.

Download File: pdf (2.3 MB)

Feb 20, 2019

BID Initiative briefs: Recommendations and lessons learned

PATH

Subjects: Packaging, People, Policies, Practices, Products

The BID Initiative is committed to sharing its learnings with others interested in improving immunization data quality and use. The following series of briefs summarizes our work alongside the governments of Tanzania and Zambia and our lessons and recommendations spanning seven key subject areas.

Dec 21, 2018

MMS Bulletin #148: Marrying engineering with health policy to bring digital health to scale

MMS Bulletin

Subjects: People, Policies, Practices, Products
Countries: Global

Just as medical doctors take the Hippocratic Oath as they graduate into their profession, so do many engineers solemnly promise to carry out work to the highest quality, recognizing that any errors may put lives at stake. Given this sharing of fundamental values, engineering is a profession that could be leveraged even further towards public health information systems to address opportunities created by the fusion of the early and relatively informal eHealth and mHealth paradigms into the more mature and complex one that is Digital Health. Recently, the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted a key resolution on Digital Health, urging member states to assess and prioritise the scale-up of the implementation of digital technologies towards the “universal access to health for all” (WHA 71.1, 2018).

Dec 21, 2018

MMS Bulletin #148: The challenges of implementing a data use culture

MMS Bulletin

Subjects: People, Policies, Practices, Products
Countries: Global

To increase coverage and equity of routine immunization services, the government of Tanzania is strengthening the data use culture through the implementation of a package of data quality and use interventions, including an electronic immunization registry, for immunization service delivery. Three key phases for achieving scale as a government-owned model emerged during the implementation: user-centered design and testing, PATH-led implementation, and government-led implementation with scale-up. A combination of factors contributed to achieving a government-owned model of implementation and ultimately showed significant time and cost savings, as well as greater ownership and ability to sustain and scale the interventions.

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