Tag: barcodes

The key to better primary health care? Human-centered design
Sep 10, 2019
Human-centered design is an approach to problem-solving that puts people first. Their needs, their constraints, their contexts and their perspectives. It focuses on users—not necessarily what designers, researchers, or others think users need.
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Reaching the last mile – a Q&A with a nurse using automated, electronic reports to trace immunization defaulters
Sep 7, 2017
Oloipiri Dispensary is among the facilities that are using Tanzania’s Electronic Immunization Registry (TImR) to record and analyze immunization information. Located in Ngonorongoro district in Arusha, Tanzania, the district borders Kenya and is comprised of mostly pastoral communities. Because of its porous border and high rates of migration, many families struggle to make immunization clinics. Children are, therefore, more likely to default on their needed immunizations. Recently, we caught up with Nurse Iddi Ally Mwambuly of Oloipiri Dispensary to understand how better data and greater visibility into that data is helping to identify defaulting children and close Tanzania’s immunization gap.
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Immunization demand generation in Afar, Ethiopia
Nov 7, 2016
PATH recently released a report on our demand generation efforts to increase immunization uptake in Afar, Ethiopia. Vaccine uptake in the remote region of Afar was hampered by poor infrastructure, difficulty reaching nomadic populations, and keeping vaccines cold in one of the hottest places on earth. While the whole of Ethiopia reports 19 percent of children under 5 not immunized, immunization coverage in the Afar region falls to 9 percent among children 12-23 months old.
Read MorePutting the Right Information in the Right Hands
May 11, 2016
The BID Initiative leverages sustainable and scalable solutions such as a national electronic immunization system and supply chain tools to put the power of data in the hands of health workers so they can do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.
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How do we improve health around the world?
Feb 24, 2016
Improving poor data quality and use is a complicated problem to solve. There isn’t a single, one size fits all solution that can truly address this challenge in a scalable, sustainable way. At the BID Initiative, we believe that the collection of multiple interventions is key to helping address data quality and use challenges. We need a holistic investment in data management policies and practices, information system products, and the people who will use them.
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Barcodes: quenching a thirst for data
Oct 29, 2015
You are thirsty and walk into your local corner store to pick up a bottle of water. The clerk scans the barcode on the bottle, announces the price, you pay, leave the store, and drink your water. The story may end there for you, but it is just the start for the data stored in that barcode which is being recorded in the store’s inventory database and communicated to distributors and suppliers across the supply chain.
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Barcodes are beginning to stick
Oct 22, 2015
A mother removes a sticker from her child’s health card. The act in and of itself seems harmless enough, but the motivation at the center of her decision is what the BID Initiative is not only trying to determine, but influence.
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Exciting changes for Mareu Health Facility
Oct 16, 2015
Mareu village is situated 50 kilometers from Arusha town in the King’ori ward. The village is four kilometers from Mareu health center, one of four health centers part of early testing during the BID Initiative’s phase zero. During this phase, interventions were tested and fine-tuned to ensure their relevance and appropriateness for other districts in Tanzania.
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Health Workers Meet the BID Initiative
Aug 14, 2015
The BID Initiative is rolling out interventions to 253 health facilities in the Arusha region over the course of this year and into early 2016. We have successfully completed the first facility visits in the Arusha City Council district and are now beginning in Meru district. We often get questions on what goes into our site visits and how we practically begin rolling out a comprehensive initiative of this scale.
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Intervention Spotlight: Electronic Immunization Registry
Jul 1, 2015
A key intervention for the BID Initiative is the national electronic immunization registry that will ensure all children are registered from birth and do not miss a potentially life-saving vaccine.
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