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Health Informatics Unit

Health Informatics Unit

About The Health Informatics Unit

The Health Informatics unit is responsible for the resources, devices, methods and technologies required to optimally acquire, store, retrieve and use information for the Institute’s programs.

It supports the use of patient monitoring and management tools to capture longitudinal data of clinical encounters. These encounters include clinical evaluation, pharmacy records, laboratory results, adherence to medication, and care and support activities.

Between 2004 and 2012, the unit used  CAREWare , a software developed by Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in 14 health facilities. In 2014, it switched to implementing a free and open source software application called OpenMRS as the standard platform for recording patient clinical visits. OpenMRS a multi-institution, non-profit collaborative electronic medical record system. The unit has participated in the development and implementation of OPENMRS in health facilities supported by the Institute.

It also implements the use of District Health Information Software – Version 2 (DHIS 2), a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for program monitoring, data collection and reporting. The software is customized to collect indicators in monthly summary to report outputs in areas such as adult/pediatric Anti-Retroviral

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A Health Care Worker in Asokoro District Hospital using the Electronic Medical Health Record System to attend to clients.

Treatment (ART). Other output areas include, pharmacy, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT), care and support, HIV testing services, and laboratory services across all supported health facilities.

The Open Data Kit (ODK), a free and open-source suite of tools that helps organizations author, field and manage mobile data collection solutions is another software implemented by the unit. ODK has been customized to report monthly indicator report  in areas like HIV Counseling and Testing, PMTCT, pharmacy, antiretroviral treatment and laboratory across health facilities supported by the Institute.

Other activities of the unit include;

  • Electronic Medical Record System development administration, troubleshooting and upgrades. across all supported health/non-health sector facilities.
  • System upgrade and maintenance to meet national and international standards.
  • Development of a central repository that will house all data from different sources.
  • Mobile reporting application that captures indicators from sites to the central repository.
  • Development and maintenance of data repository for easy visualization of activities.
  • Provision of software development services to the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) biorepository project.
  • Oversight and supervision of all Health Management Information System (HMIS) pilots and projects.
  • Technical support to program areas and supported sites on patient information systems.
  • Data quality assurance activities that range from data cleaning, gap analyses and validation.
  • Recruitment, training and supervision of data human resources.

Support for quality improvement program implementation.

Unit contact email: [email protected]

Health Informatics Team