Capacity Building Mentorship Program
Improve data quality and transformation of health information in the two regions.
- Improve the capacity of health workers and health managers to use health information for evidence-based decision-making.
- Build the capacity of health workers and health managers at all levels in the two woredas to analyze, use and prepare quality reports
- Implement DHIS2, EMR and HRIS systems in selected facilities and woreda health offices of two region
NURTURE
NURTURE is a capacity-building project within Sub-Programme of Education and Teacher Training of the Norway Government. The NURTURE-project aims tocontribute to better, relevant, more accessible and more efficient higher education in Ethiopia. The project improves the capacity of three education programs (eHealth, informatics, and special needs) in five universities in Ethiopia including University of Gondar.
BETTEReHEALTH
BETTEReHEALTH aimed to inform e-health policymaking towards better health outcomes through a bottom-up evidence-based holistic approach in African LLMICs. We are working to address three aspects related to successful e-health: human, technical and public policy factors. BETTEReHEALTH will set up four Regional Hubs based in Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia and Malawi, already endorsed by each country’s Ministry of Health. Each hub will organize coordination and networking activities (including two regional workshops) involving national and regional actors.
WHO_DAKs Implementation Research
Countries are increasing investments in the digitization of legacy paper-based systems. WHO launched the SMART Guidelines initiative to support countries’ digitization journeys and facilitate a structured approach to embedding WHO recommendations and standards within digital systems. “Digital Adaptation Kit” (DAK) is one of the tools within the WHO SMART Guidelines initiative. DAKs provide an operational and software-neutral mechanism that distills WHO guidelines into a standardized format that can be more easily incorporated into digital systems.
DHA
Supported by USAID-funded Digital Health Activity (DHA), the University of Gondar works on the IR implementation and interoperability of digital health systems in Ethiopia with the vision of building a sustainable, resilient, and interoperable health information system (HIS) that ensures the entire health sector has the data, analytics, and skills necessary to improve the health and wellbeing of all Ethiopians.
The University of Gondar, partnering with the DHA of JSI and funding from SAID, provides technical HIS support at the point of health service delivery, i.e., PHCUs and health facilities, and supports the interoperability of HIS in the Federal Ministry of Health, Ethiopia.
Global Digital Health Exemplars
The Center for Global Digital Health Innovation (CGDHI) based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and eHealth Lab Ethiopia based at the University of Gondar is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to understand which countries have been able to successfully leverage digital solutions to transform PHC service delivery – and the facilitators and challenges experienced in their paths. This work is part of the larger Exemplars in Global Health initiative. To support this work, we are engaging stakeholders from countries that can benefit from the findings and adapt them for their country contexts.
Interoperability Academy
In Ethiopia, several digital health initiatives have been implemented including District Health Information System Version2 (DHIS2), Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Systems, Electronic Community Based Health Insurance (eCBHI), Electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS), Logistic Management Information System (LMIS), Human Resource Information System (HRIS), and Master Facility Registries. However, these initiatives were characterized as fragmented, with identified duplicated efforts, inadequate ICT infrastructure or planning, insufficient enabling environments to support eHealth standards, and limited e-health coordination at multiple layers of the health sector. These result in disparate information stored in different locations and formats and make it seemingly impossible for data to be collated, synced, and shared.
EMR Development and Implementation
In the past many years, Ethiopia had made efforts to implement EMR systems at various public health facilities. However, the implementation efforts have been unsuccessful in all but a few health facilities. Training and follow-up, lack of management commitment, poor ICT infrastructure, and hardware and software-related issues were presumed to be the challenges that contributed to the EMR implementation failure. In addition, the absence of a national EMR implementation roadmap that guides the overall EMR implementation had contributed to the implementation failure of EMR systems.
Health System and Policy Research
The University of Gondar, in collaboration with Ethiopian Public Health Institute, planned to conduct the Health Policy and System Research (HPSR) priority setting by using a literature review, expert panel workshop, formative online survey, and qualitative interviews. The participants are from health systems (policymakers and program experts), researchers from research and academic institution, partners, and professional association—the project aimed to identify Ethiopia’s HPSR needs and conduct the priority-setting exercise using the Delphi technique.
HIS Project Management CPD Course Development
To realize the Information Revolution Agenda and Roadmap, the Ministry of Health is developing and implementing several digital health systems. However, the development of these systems shall be led and managed by competent and trained Health Information System (HIS) workforces with Project Management (PM) knowledge and skills. To support this, the University of Gondar in collaboration with the Jembi Health system and the Ministry of Health is developing course materials on HIS PM. The course is designed for new and middle-level HIS project managers to support the design, development, and implementation of digital health systems.
Ethiopia HIE Guideline and Standards
The University of Gondar and the Jembi Health Systems in collaboration with the Ministry of Health have adopted the AU HIE Guidelines and Standards to the Ethiopia context. The adopted document was validated in two validation workshops involving experts from the Ministry of Health, stakeholders, partners, and Universities. Following the validation workshops, comments and recommendations from the two workshop participants were addressed and incorporated accordingly. The document comprises three sections…