Category: News
Investment in digital health needs careful planning: new WHO guide explains how to do it well
Oct 15, 2020
With the right approach and effective investment, digital health interventions can be successful long-term solutions that help to improve the health and well-being of the people they were designed to reach. A new guide has been launched by WHO to help ensure that digital health investments are effective, sustainable, and equitable – and that they are implemented in a coordinated way and appropriate for the local context. The Digital Implementation Investment Guide has been published by WHO and HRP in collaboration with PATH, UNICEF, and UNFPA.
Read More
In historic milestone, Zambia expands its electronic immunization registry to a second province
Oct 6, 2020
Zambia’s Electronic Immunization Registry (ZEIR) will roll out to a second province next month, under the leadership and direction of the Ministry of Health (MOH). It represents the government’s commitment to scaling ZEIR. It’s also a chance for the government to increasingly lead rollout. While the BID Initiative partnered with the MOH in Southern Province, Western Province will be led by the MOH, in partnership with the EPI-OPT consortium, including CHAZ, UNICEF, PATH and CIDRZ.
Read More
New consortium commits to strengthening immunization services in the face of COVID-19
Aug 17, 2020
Last month, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched a new project that will accelerate and strengthen routine immunization programs by identifying and addressing bottlenecks to the planning, delivery, demand, and uptake of vaccines. The five year, $55 million project, called MOMENTUM 3B, will be led by the JSI Research and Training Institute, in close partnership with PATH, CORE Group, Results for Development, The Manoff Group, and Gobee Group.
Read More
Maintaining commitment to immunization in Africa through COVID-19 and beyond
May 14, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is putting a strain on health systems worldwide. The increasing demand on health facilities and health care workers has dramatically shifted resources from essential routine health services—such as immunization—to COVID-19 response as countries put in place measures to control the infection and limit the impact on health systems and economies. However, the world has learned from past outbreaks of diseases like Ebola that disruption of immunization services—even for brief periods—can result in outbreaks and unnecessary deaths.
Read More
3 ways immunization data tools are flexing to fight COVID-19 in Africa
Apr 24, 2020
Digital and data tools and approaches first introduced to strengthen immunization services can be used to understand and curb the devastating impacts of pandemics like COVID-19.
Read More
Launching the future of data
Oct 2, 2019
Tanzania has made strides in embracing digital platforms within its health system. Health workers, for example, are using defaulter lists from the Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) to trace patients who have missed vaccines in the vast Ngorongoro District, which has previously struggled to retain children within immunization programs because of the district’s nomadic communities. Health workers in Tanga are also witnessing firsthand the full advantages of using an exclusively electronic system. And in June, the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children (MOHCDGDEC) and the Immunization and Vaccines Development (IVD) program took another step towards Tanzania’s digital future.
Read More
Increasing immunization coverage requires better use of better data
Apr 2, 2019
Global funders, country policymakers, and immunization program implementers know that the use of high-quality data is a cornerstone of well-functioning immunization programs. When high-quality data is available, public health decision-makers can understand which populations are underserved and where resources can be allocated most effectively. Immunization coverage rates have improved over the past few decades, but they have plateaued around 80 percent. The challenge with reaching the last 20 percent of children is to know who they are and where they are, which requires easily accessible and accurate data along with the capacity to interpret that data to take action.
Read More
BID Story launches celebrating the transformative power of data and country ownership
Nov 14, 2018
Five years. Two electronic immunization registries (EIRs). Nineteen design countries who regularly input to the BID Learning Network. Study visits to Benin and Chile to learn from others implementing health information systems. More than half a million children registered in both EIRs, and 1,580 health facilities implementing data quality and use interventions, allowing health workers to collect, analyze, and act upon immunization data in real time.
Read More
Good data saves lives: How digital record-keeping is helping transform immunisation in Tanzania
Oct 25, 2018
In the harsh, dry highland plains of the Ngorongoro region of Tanzania stands a small red tent – a tiny speck of colour in an otherwise dusty, lifeless landscape. It can be seen from several kilometres away, and that is precisely the point. Because even before Bakari Shemagembe, the local Assistant Medical Officer, and his team have finished setting up around the tent, the local Maasai tribespeople start to arrive, trickling in from all directions, drawn towards this beacon.
Read More
Reflections from the inaugural OpenHIE Community Meeting: Learning, sharing, growing, and innovating
Oct 3, 2018
Organizing an international five-day meeting for a diverse digital health community is no easy task. There are venues to secure, agendas to develop, and invitation letters to draft. Yet the leaders and innovators of the OpenHIE community were driven to ensure that we all had a place where we could gather to get to know and learn from each other about health information exchange.
Read More