This community innovation has been accepted at the 2026 DHIS2 Annual Conference as a digital poster.
Injury Surveillance through EMR–DHIS2 Integration
Injury related morbidity remains a major public health burden in Sri Lanka, consistently ranking as the leading cause of hospitalization. The National Injury Surveillance System (NISS) is a DHIS2 deployment that manages injury data from hospitals nationwide to inform the national non communicable disease programme. It traditionally relies on clinician completed paper forms, transcribed by data entry operators. This process results in delays and data quality issues aggravated by limited staff. To address these limitations, Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children (LRH), the country’s largest paediatric tertiary care hospital, implemented a direct integration between its electronic medical record system (Hospital Health Information Management System - HHIMS) and the NISS. Structured injury data capture was embedded into routine clinical workflows, with metadata alignment and API based submission to DHIS2. This approach reduced duplicate data entry and improved timely reporting. Beyond technical integration, this work surfaced workflow and governance challenges. Patient status and injury classifications evolve during care, complicating real time reporting. Concurrent national reporting requirements, including the electronic Indoor Morbidity and Mortality Return (eIMMR), necessitates crosschecking and reconciliation of submissions. A hybrid integration model was adopted to address these realities. Clinicians document injury data within the EMR, while a stewardship layer supported by a validation dashboard enables designated medical officers to review and curate submissions to DHIS2. This approach balances automation with accountability, transparency, and data trust. Over the past three years, LRH has demonstrated the highest sustained improvements in national injury data reporting, despite its high patient volumes. This experience demonstrates how DHIS2 capabilities can be seamlessly aligned with high throughput clinical workflows, for facilitating data exchange to enable monitoring and evaluation in healthcare.
Primary Author: Malinda Wijeratne
Keywords:
DHIS2, injury surveillance, hospital EMR integration, electronic medical records, national health information systems, Sri Lanka, data quality, data stewardship, API integration, clinical workflows, public sector hospitals, health governance, monitoring and evaluation
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