This community innovation has been accepted at the 2026 DHIS2 Annual Conference as a physical poster.
From Signals to Action: Epidemiology in Sri Lanka
Communicable disease surveillance in Sri Lanka is supported by legally mandated notification, field investigation, and weekly reporting processes, alongside hospital-based morbidity and mortality reporting. Although these systems function well individually, they have historically operated in isolation, limiting supervisors’ ability to compare signals, detect inconsistencies, and respond promptly. Decision-making often relied on delayed reports rather than routinely available integrated evidence. This intervention enabled practical data triangulation for epidemiological decision-making by embedding multiple surveillance data streams within a single DHIS2-based analytics framework. Routine datasets for the Weekly Return of Communicable Diseases and MOH-level field investigation summaries were digitised and implemented in DHIS2, replacing a legacy proprietary reporting system. Daily hospital notifications on suspicion, including outcome information, and ICD-10–coded inpatient morbidity and mortality data were incorporated through automated data exchange processes. Supervisor-facing dashboards were designed to align with Sri Lanka’s public health administrative hierarchy, allowing indicators to be viewed consistently at national, provincial, district, and MOH levels with drill-down. The dashboards enable direct comparison of suspected cases, field-confirmed notifications, hospital admissions, and deaths across different reporting cadences. Leptospirosis was used as a tracer condition to demonstrate how discrepancies between hospital signals and routine surveillance data highlight under-notification, investigation delays, and geographic inconsistencies. In practice, the dashboards supported timely identification of critical data gaps. In one instance, a communicable disease death recorded in inpatient morbidity data but missing from routine institutional reporting was detected through the national dashboard, prompting immediate regional follow-up, field verification, and escalation to the national focal point. This demonstrates how triangulated, multi-level DHIS2 dashboards strengthen accountability and support timely epidemiological action.
Primary Author: Mojitha Fernando
Keywords:
Communicable disease surveillance, epidemiology, data triangulation, DHIS2, decision-making, public health supervision, notifiable diseases, hospital notifications, morbidity and mortality data, surveillance dashboards, health information systems, outbreak monitoring, Sri Lanka
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