This community innovation has been accepted at the 2025 DHIS2 Annual Conference
Harmonizing DHIS2 Systems for Malaria Monitoring
Integrating health data from diverse systems is crucial for improving data quality and supporting informed decision making in public health. This study explores an approach to integrate data from two DHIS2 based systems in Ethiopia: the Health Management Information System (HMIS), which uses a customized Ethiopian calendar for monthly malaria reporting, and the Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM)/IDSR system, which uses an EpiWeek for weekly reporting. The lack of harmonization between these systems, along with differences in reporting periods and data disaggregation, has created significant data quality challenges, leading to inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and reduced usability, even when data originates from the same health facilities. To address these issues, a proof of concept digital health data warehouse was developed to integrate HMIS and PHEM data, enabling a more comprehensive malaria surveillance and response. Built using open source tools and a modular architecture, the system resolves discrepancies and facilitates easier data comparison between the two platforms. The integration process involves extracting weekly and monthly data from PHEM and HMIS. Apache NiFi automates the extraction, transformation, and loading of data into PostgreSQL, a staging database. The data is then denormalized and transferred to a ClickHouse based data warehouse, optimized for high speed querying and analysis. Finally, Superset is used to create interactive dashboards for visualizing the harmonized data. This approach highlights the potential of open source tools to overcome challenges such as differing reporting calendars and data disaggregation. By harmonizing HMIS and PHEM data, the system improves data quality and consistency, enhancing malaria monitoring and public health response. The successful implementation of this proof of concept underscores the critical role of integration in achieving sustainable health information system.
Primary Author: Belendia Serda
Keywords:
Health Data Integration, Data Quality Improvement, Digital Health Data Warehouse, Apache NiFi, Data Transformation, Integrated Surveillance Systems, ClickHouse