Tag: TImR
Hearing from the health workers themselves: User feedback on digital solutions accelerates progress
Nov 5, 2020
Sharing health workers’ experiences with digital solutions is a critical step to ensure the new tools and systems are adopted and embraced. It matters to users, implementing partners, decision makers, developers, and all who are engaged with digital health solutions. Throughout implementation of the BID Initiative in Tanzania and Zambia, feedback was collected from health workers about the devices and systems they used. This helped to inform the design of the digital tools and—once they were rolled out—contributed to their refinement and improvement.
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Tanzania’s electronic immunization registry rolls out new features to respond to COVID-19
Sep 10, 2020
As COVID-19 rattles many countries and their health systems, Tanzania is turning to its robust network of digital health systems to help curb the pandemic. Under the government’s strong leadership, the Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) has been in use since 2017. Now, the country is exploring new features for TImR that will strengthen the system and enable its role in the pandemic response.
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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.
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BID expands to five more regions in Tanzania, accelerating progress
Jun 13, 2019
In Tanzania, the government expanded data quality and use interventions to five more regions, including Mwanza, Njombe, Morogoro, Geita and Lindi. The Tanzania electronic immunization registry (TImR) is now being used in nine regions and 2,060 facilities in 66 districts across the country. It’s an exciting milestone for the BID Initiative because it represents the largest number of regions to implement data quality and use interventions in the shortest period of time.
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Aziza Ahmed Seif: Health workers make history as first in Tanzania to retire paper registers
May 30, 2019
In March 2018, Aziza Ahmed Seif and her fellow nurses at the Mikanjuni Health Center in Tanga, Tanzania, made history. They, along with workers at 32 other health facilities in Tanga, retired the thick paper immunization registers they had spent their entire nursing careers using and embraced a digital system that places a universe of data at their fingertips. They traded pen and paper for a tablet framed by colorful data visualizations, swapped crowded tally sheets for a simplified stock management module, and replaced the long evenings of record-keeping that used to characterize immunization clinics with a series of automated reports.
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Tanzania makes history as first facilities retire paper immunization registers
Apr 25, 2019
Aziz Seif Ahmed works as a reproductive and child health nurse in Mikanjuni health center, one of the busiest clinics in Tanga municipal council, vaccinating about 370 children a month. Each month, Aziza used to spend more than 10 hours compiling and completing monthly immunization reports, and more or less the same number of hours compiling and completing child health monthly summary reports in the HMIS Book 7 to report to DHIS2. She often worked evenings and weekends to cross-reference stock ledgers, meticulously count opened vaccine vials, add tallies, and then carefully inscribe the information. It was a pain-staking process and just a few human errors from her miscalculations or the inaccurate recording of data might have serious consequences. This sometimes translated into insufficient vaccine stock and required that Aziza turn patients away for lifesaving vaccines.
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Dr. Tove Ryman: Digital tools usher in a data revolution for health workers on the front lines
Apr 17, 2019
With the tap of her finger, Neema Temu can easily toggle between two estimates of immunization coverage within her catchment area. A health worker at Monduli Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania, she cheerfully demonstrates her new electronic immunization registry to Dr. Tove Ryman—Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and technical lead of the BID Initiative.
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Tanzania at forefront of digital transformation thanks to government leadership
Mar 21, 2019
Dr. Dafrossa Lyimo has experienced Tanzania’s digital transformation as both a mother and a health professional. As a mother to four children, she understands the long distances children often travel for a life-saving vaccine and the disappointment of being turned away because of vaccine stock-outs, among other factors. As Tanzania’s Immunization and Vaccination Development Manager, she knows the consequences of missing, inaccurate, and untimely data to inform her decisions, particularly on where and when vaccines are most needed. In both roles, she has championed the use of data to improve immunization services.
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Goodbye paper: How Tanzania is leapfrogging the digital divide
Mar 4, 2019
Tanzania is an early adopter of digital tools and technology. Here’s how that’s strengthened its national health system and established Tanzania as a leader in the global digital health revolution.
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Uganda’s immunization program officials and civil society representatives share experiences, learn about Tanzania’s electronic immunization system
Dec 26, 2018
Uganda, like many other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa faces a number of health-related challenges. At the same time, the country has dramatically improved health outcomes through several initiatives, particularly for maternal and child health. As a signatory to the Addis Declaration on Immunization, Uganda has taken measures to improve immunization outcomes, including establishing an immunization law, increasing domestic financing, and embracing innovations, such as electronic immunization systems.
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