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One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange
BACKGROUND: Robust, flexible, and integrated health information (HIS) systems are essential to achieving national and international goals in health and development. Such systems are still uncommon in most low and middle income countries. This article describes a first-phase activity in Tanzania to i...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8086308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33926428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-021-01499-6 |
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author | Nsaghurwe, Alpha Dwivedi, Vikas Ndesanjo, Walter Bamsi, Haji Busiga, Moses Nyella, Edwin Massawe, Japhet Victor Smith, Dasha Onyejekwe, Kate Metzger, Jonathan Taylor, Patricia |
author_facet | Nsaghurwe, Alpha Dwivedi, Vikas Ndesanjo, Walter Bamsi, Haji Busiga, Moses Nyella, Edwin Massawe, Japhet Victor Smith, Dasha Onyejekwe, Kate Metzger, Jonathan Taylor, Patricia |
author_sort | Nsaghurwe, Alpha |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Robust, flexible, and integrated health information (HIS) systems are essential to achieving national and international goals in health and development. Such systems are still uncommon in most low and middle income countries. This article describes a first-phase activity in Tanzania to integrate the country’s vertical health management information system with the help of an interoperability layer that enables cross-program data exchange. METHODS: From 2014 to 2019, the Tanzanian government and partners implemented a five-step procedure based on the “Mind the GAPS” (governance, architecture, program management, and standards) framework and using both proprietary and open-source tools. In collaboration with multiple stakeholders, the team developed the system to address major data challenges via four fully documented “use case scenarios” addressing data exchange among hospitals, between services and the supply chain, across digital data systems, and within the supply chain reporting system. This work included developing the architecture for health system data exchange, putting a middleware interoperability layer in place to facilitate the exchange, and training to support use of the system and the data it generates. RESULTS: Tanzania successfully completed the five-step procedure for all four use cases. Data exchange is currently enabled among 15 separate information systems, and has resulted in improved data availability and significant time savings. The government has adopted the health information exchange within the national strategy for health care information, and the system is being operated and managed by Tanzanian officials. CONCLUSION: Developing an integrated HIS requires a significant time investment; but ultimately benefit both programs and patients. Tanzania’s experience may interest countries that are developing their HIS programs. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8086308 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80863082021-04-30 One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange Nsaghurwe, Alpha Dwivedi, Vikas Ndesanjo, Walter Bamsi, Haji Busiga, Moses Nyella, Edwin Massawe, Japhet Victor Smith, Dasha Onyejekwe, Kate Metzger, Jonathan Taylor, Patricia BMC Med Inform Decis Mak Technical Advance BACKGROUND: Robust, flexible, and integrated health information (HIS) systems are essential to achieving national and international goals in health and development. Such systems are still uncommon in most low and middle income countries. This article describes a first-phase activity in Tanzania to integrate the country’s vertical health management information system with the help of an interoperability layer that enables cross-program data exchange. METHODS: From 2014 to 2019, the Tanzanian government and partners implemented a five-step procedure based on the “Mind the GAPS” (governance, architecture, program management, and standards) framework and using both proprietary and open-source tools. In collaboration with multiple stakeholders, the team developed the system to address major data challenges via four fully documented “use case scenarios” addressing data exchange among hospitals, between services and the supply chain, across digital data systems, and within the supply chain reporting system. This work included developing the architecture for health system data exchange, putting a middleware interoperability layer in place to facilitate the exchange, and training to support use of the system and the data it generates. RESULTS: Tanzania successfully completed the five-step procedure for all four use cases. Data exchange is currently enabled among 15 separate information systems, and has resulted in improved data availability and significant time savings. The government has adopted the health information exchange within the national strategy for health care information, and the system is being operated and managed by Tanzanian officials. CONCLUSION: Developing an integrated HIS requires a significant time investment; but ultimately benefit both programs and patients. Tanzania’s experience may interest countries that are developing their HIS programs. BioMed Central 2021-04-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8086308/ /pubmed/33926428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-021-01499-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Technical Advance Nsaghurwe, Alpha Dwivedi, Vikas Ndesanjo, Walter Bamsi, Haji Busiga, Moses Nyella, Edwin Massawe, Japhet Victor Smith, Dasha Onyejekwe, Kate Metzger, Jonathan Taylor, Patricia One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange |
title | One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange |
title_full | One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange |
title_fullStr | One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange |
title_full_unstemmed | One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange |
title_short | One country's journey to interoperability: Tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange |
title_sort | one country's journey to interoperability: tanzania's experience developing and implementing a national health information exchange |
topic | Technical Advance |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8086308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33926428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-021-01499-6 |
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