This community innovation has been accepted at the 2026 DHIS2 Annual Conference as a digital poster.
A DHIS2 Tracker for Neonatal Inpatient Care
Kenya is developing a DHIS2 Tracker module for neonatal inpatient care within the national Kenya Health Information System (KHIS) to enable patient‑level data capture in hospitals. Neonatal mortality remains a major public health challenge, accounting for nearly half of all under‑five deaths, many of which occur during the first days of life in hospital settings. Despite this, neonatal inpatient data are largely paper‑based, fragmented, and poorly integrated into national digital health systems.
The Clinical Information Network (CIN)—a collaboration between the KEMRI‑Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), Ministry of Health (MoH), Kenya Paediatric Association, NEST360, the University of Nairobi, and others—has demonstrated that structured clinical data can improve documentation quality, clinical audit and feedback, and care practices. However, while KHIS supports aggregate reporting, it lacks a dedicated module for tracking individual neonatal inpatient care and outcomes.
To address this gap, the CIN collaboration, under the stewardship of the MoH, is developing a neonatal inpatient DHIS2 Tracker module aligned with the national MoH inpatient form (MOH 378) and World Health Organization standards. Through a participatory co‑design process, 204 neonatal inpatient data elements and 47 core indicators were identified, harmonized, and digitized.
The solution leverages standard DHIS2 Tracker functionality, harmonized metadata, and web APIs, with planned interoperability through the national health information exchange using open standards under the Digital Health Agency. The module supports near real‑time data capture to improve data quality, clinical audits and routine reporting. User acceptance testing conducted in September 2025 validated workflows, validation rules, analytics, and role‑based access control, confirming readiness for piloting. A national configuration workshop in February 2026 further strengthened readiness for implementation.
The pilot, scheduled for April-July 2026 in selected high‑volume CIN and non‑CIN hospitals, will assess feasibility, usability, and data quality. Findings will inform a costed roadmap for phased national scale‑up and generate lessons for extending KHIS Tracker to hospital‑based neonatal inpatient care within a nationally owned health information system.
Keywords:
DHIS2 Tracker; Neonatal inpatient care; Patient‑level data; Digital health policy; Health information systems; Data quality; Interoperability; Kenya
Thanks for sharing the workflow diagram, it is clear and looks very organized.