Category: People
Betting on Better Data
Aug 18, 2015
When you mention innovation, most people immediately think of the latest app that tracks daily life with pinpoint precision, or costly new technologies like Google Glass that just a decade ago would have been considered impossible.
Read More
Intervention Spotlight: Creating a Data-Use Culture
Jul 29, 2015
The BID Initiative is not a technology or IT project. It’s based on the premise that we must take a holistic approach to the immunization data quality and use challenges countries face through a collection of multiple interventions. The products we are implementing, such as the national electronic immunization registry, will not be successful without additional activities that simplify data flows and reporting, make data accessible across multiple levels of the health system, and cultivate a culture of data use.
Read More
BID Rolls Out in Arusha
Jul 22, 2015
At the end of last month, the BID Initiative officially launched interventions in Arusha, our pilot region in Tanzania! We began with a handful of facilities to user test the new national electronic immunization system and incorporated feedback before expanding to additional facilities. This is a culmination of major efforts in establishing partnerships, identifying the most pressing immunization data-related challenges and fine-tuning interventions to solve them.
Read More
Firsthand Look at Supply & Logistics Management in Dakar
Jun 16, 2015
In 2007, PATH and the World Health Organization (WHO) began a collaborative effort to prioritize supply chain efforts through Project Optimize. Between 2009 and 2012, the Ministry of Health in Senegal engaged Optimize as a way address issues in the supply chain in innovative ways. During the 2015 BLN meeting in Dakar, Senegal, participants had the opportunity to explore and learn about the technologies implemented.
Read More
BLN Dives into Logistics Management Information Systems
Jun 11, 2015
The second BID Initiative Learning Network (BLN) Design Collaborative meeting occurred in Dakar, Senegal, during 26-28 May 2015. Sixteen participants with representation of fifteen sub-Saharan African countries attended the meeting and discussed the design, development and implementation of Logistics Management Information Systems (LMIS) within the African context.
Read More
Meet Lucy: A Health Worker’s Job Before and After the BID Initiative
Jun 3, 2015
Meet Lucy. Lucy is a head nurse in a busy, urban facility in Arusha, Tanzania. Like many health workers in Sub-Saharan Africa, Lucy and her colleagues must sift through dense immunization registries to identify kids who need to be immunized. But her job doesn’t stop there. Lucy must also make sure she has enough stock on hand to deliver vaccines and prepare a monthly report for the district.
Read MoreBLN Design Collaborative Preview, 25-28 May 2015
May 13, 2015
As a part of these ongoing efforts, the BLN will host a Design Collaborative meeting from 25-28 May, 2015 in Dakar, Senegal. This meeting will bring managers of national immunization programs and logisticians from 15 West, East and Southern African countries to focus on evaluating requirements and systems for logistics data generation and management.
Read More
Health Workers Successfully use WhatsApp to Solve Problems
May 7, 2015
During the testing phase of interventions in four health facilities in the districts of Meru and Arusha, we established a WhatsApp group as a communication forum for healthcare workers.
Read More
From Malaria to Immunization Data
Apr 24, 2015
I’ve worked in the field of malaria for close to 20 years in sub-Saharan Africa, which experiences a high burden. My choice of career was based on my personal encounter with malaria and the reality of its devastating effects on society in a developing economy. In 1981, when I was temping with a hospital, a lady with a baby on her back walked into the Outpatient Department. She wanted her baby checked because she was ill and getting worse.
Read More
Global Partnership on Development Data
Apr 17, 2015
Data is a hot topic in the global community, as we saw with the recent New York Times article, and we are inspired by the enthusiasm as we continue moving forward into the next phases of the Better Immunization Data Initiative. Claire Melamed recently authored an article on Global Dashboard, So what could a Global Partnership on Development Data do for us?
Read More