This community innovation has been accepted at the 2025 DHIS2 Annual Conference
Integration and Interoperability of Impilo Electro
The integration of the Impilo Electronic Health Record (EHR) system with DHIS2 using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards represents a significant advancement in Zimbabwe’s health information system. Impilo EHR, deployed across over 700 facilities, captures real-time clinical and administrative data for key services, including HIV Testing Services (HTS), Antiretroviral Therapy (ART), and Maternal and Child Health (MCH). This integration enhances data interoperability, enabling seamless visualization, reporting, and decision-making in DHIS2. The Impilo EHR system previously lacked mechanisms for effective data integration and user-friendly reporting, driving the need for this integration. Leveraging FHIR ensures standardized data exchange and compatibility with international systems, addressing critical gaps in health program monitoring and decision-making. The data pipeline supports the flow of health data from facilities to DHIS2. Facilities employ three pipelines for data collection: real-time transfer via OpenHIE pipeline for connected facilities, mobile backups pipeline for offline synchronization, and manual backups pipeline for infrastructure-limited settings. Data is transformed into FHIR-compliant resources, prioritizing high-impact registers such as HTS, ART, and viral load monitoring. Transformed data is stored in centralized repositories, extracted into a national data warehouse, and further optimized in data marts for reporting and analysis. Python-based middleware services interact with the DHIS2 API to update tracker programs and aggregate data. This integration achieves real-time interoperability, reporting on over 150 indicators and 15 facility registers in DHIS2 via FHIR mappings. DHIS2 serves as the end-user database, enabling stakeholders to download data for analysis. Dashboards provide actionable insights into HIV testing, ART adherence, and viral load suppression. By adopting FHIR standards, Zimbabwe ensures sustainability and scalability.
Primary Author: Shepherd Maverudze
Keywords:
Impilo EHR, DHIS2, FHIR, Health Information Interoperability, Digital Health Transformation, Data Pipeline, Real-Time Data Exchange
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Thanks for sharing! Well done, Zimbabwe. 
Must have taken a lot of proper metadata configuration to make this work. 
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