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Category: Policies & Practices

Resources: Information Systems for EPI

Mar 2, 2015

I am honored and excited to present at the Inaugural Conference of the International Association of Immunization Managers (IAIM) on March 3-4, 2015, in Istanbul, Turkey. A program of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, this two day conference brings together over 300 participants and offers immunization manager members the opportunity to meet their peers in other countries, exchange information and best practices in immunization program management, and learn more about the professional support that IAIM offers them to help advance their management and leadership skills.

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Overcoming Supply Chain Bottlenecks at the Community Level

Feb 9, 2015

A key component in the BID Initiative approach focuses on supply chain interventions. Interventions such as barcode technology, alerts for expired vaccines and using this data in supply and inventory reports will ensure each clinic has adequate vaccine supply, the district officials have visibility into and can better manage supply levels and the community health workers are trained in supply chain management. Today, we take a look at how another organization, JSI, is Improving Supply Chains for Community Case Management (SC4CCM) through a five-year learning project.

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User Advisory Group Established in Zambia

Dec 24, 2014

We recently established a new User Advisory Group (UAG) in the Livingstone District of Zambia! Similar to the Tanzania UAG, this group will play a critical role in the design and iteration of proposed solutions and interventions. The goal is to improve immunisation data quality, collection and use addressing the various challenges identified by the EPI program and other stakeholders in the district.

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Testing Interventions in Livingstone

Dec 19, 2014

Last month, we joined our colleagues from both the Lusaka and Livingstone offices to visit four health facilities in Livingstone. The purpose of our visits were to test the proposed product vision and change management interventions in the facilities and obtain feedback from health care providers.

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Sustainable Impact at Global mHealth Forum

Dec 13, 2014

If you follow the Potomac River south from Washington, DC, on the Maryland side you’ll come across a large hotel and convention center in National Harbor, MD. Here, the Gaylord National Convention Center is buzzing with the energy of over 500 people from 50 countries who have gathered to share knowledge and experiences around using mobile phones for health impact in low- and middle-income countries.

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UHC and ICT: More than Just Acronyms

Dec 12, 2014

Today is the first-ever Universal Health Coverage day and the two-year anniversary of a unanimous United Nations resolution endorsing universal health coverage. Over 500 organizations around the world are working to ensure that “every person, everywhere, has access to health care without financial hardship.”[1]

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A Quiet Revolution: Strengthening the Routine Health Information System in Bangladesh

Dec 4, 2014

The BID Initiative is not designed to create new information system products and solutions. Instead, our aim is to embrace and extend existing systems and investments made by national governments and their cooperating partners wherever possible.

In October, we conducted a webinar on the Electronic Immunization Registry implementation in Albania. Now, we take a look at a publication: A Quiet Revolution: Strengthening the Routine Health Information System in Bangladesh to learn how the Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) used open source software to enable public health facilities to electronically report routine health information. It is our hope that by learning from what other countries have tested and implemented, we will arrive at a holistic and replicable solution that will result in strengthened immunization systems and overall health outcomes.

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Using ICT to Improve Immunization Programs

Nov 26, 2014

I was fortunate to be invited to a WHO stakeholder consultation meeting earlier this month in Istanbul. The meeting focused on sharing experiences using information and communication technology to improve immunization programs. In addition, we brainstormed possibilities for future use and introduction of innovation and finally, consulted on the roles that WHO should play to enable adoption of promising technologies, focusing on WHO’s normative function around data standards, as well as on its advisory function concerning use of data, and managing innovation for scalable and sustainable outcomes. Clearly from a BID Initiative perspective, we had a lot to learn and to contribute.

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Increasing Efficiency with Barcode Technology in Tanzania

Nov 21, 2014

In 2010,PATH set out to identify how low income countries could benefit from using barcode technology to improve the efficiency of the vaccine supply chain. The objective was to support the design of sustainable barcode technology to increase the efficiency and visibility of vaccine supply chain at all levels of the supply chain to facilitate decision making so Ministries of Health could achieve safety of vaccines and more efficient immunization programs.

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A Strategic Approach to Investing in Data Systems

Nov 5, 2014

In 2012, when Bill and Melinda Gates approved the creation of an explicit Routine Immunization strategy, we noted to them that improved immunization data is a fundamental driver of improved immunization systems overall. However, at the time, we did not have a comprehensive, strategic approach to investing in data systems. Rather than conduct a series of small, academic studies on this topic, we made a large investment to PATH—the Better Immunization Data (BID) Initiative—with the belief that systems change, and improving data, would require a complex, holistic approach and that based in part of the BID Initiative’s progress, we’d figure out our own strategy along the way.

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