Digital Transformation of the Vaccine Safety Surveillance in the Americas: the role of DHIS2

Implementation - Implémentation Interoperability
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We will be presenting the PAHO experience with DHIS2 for Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) surveillance at the DHIS2 annual meeting 2022.

I will present in the parallel session “Immunization”. The session is scheduled for Monday, 20th June at 14.15hs CEST. @Vittoria.Cri will moderate.

With HISP-UiO assistance, at PAHO we adapted DHIS2 AEFI tracker module to fulfill the regional guidelines and best practices in pharmacovigilance. Our DHIS2 expert (Eng Victor Osorio) changed the program stages including the Research step; and added some variables like the ones related to pregnancy. We also incorporated international codification standards like ICD-11, SNOMED, MedDRA and WHODrug.

The project has two different types of implementation:

  1. At a regional level, PAHO installed a centralized version of the DHIS2 AEFI tracker module for international sentinel surveillance. It is accessed by sentinel hospitals from member states as a SaaS (software as a service).
  2. At the National level, PAHO promotes the adoption of DHIS2 as a data management solution for passive AEFI surveillance with in-country ownership. Different countries are taking steps towards this approach.

Additionally, we are pursuing regional interoperability goals, including DHIS2 as one of the systems that should share information.

  1. We are trying to connect different systems (DHIS2 and others) using FHIR as interoperability standard. Therefore, any country (with any given system) would send AEFI reports to PAHO using this standard. We are tying to generate such output form DHIS2.
  2. Finally, we are mapping FHIR to E2B XML to allow bidirectional compatibility with Vigibase, the global pharmacovigilance database from Uppsala Monitoring Center. In this way, any given country generating a FHIR output would be able to create an E2B XML message to fulfill global pharmacovigilance reporting requirements.

We are thankful for the support of UiO and HISP Latin American Team, and Interoperability team:
@anamariaelsal @marko @Enzo @Rebecca @ctejo @bobj @cwidanage @ and many more!

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We also presented a paper at MIE 2022 explaining this project. You can find it at the conference Proceedings: IOS Press Ebooks - Using FHIR to Support COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Electronic Case Reports in America

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Welcome to the DHIS2 CoP @Daniel_Rizzato_Lede :wave:

Thanks for sharing this interoperability use-case from the Americas :slight_smile: :+1:

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