Background
Uganda joins many other countries to celebrate 10th DHIS2 implementation anniversary this year. During these years a number on DHIS2 instances have been set up to support different programs monitoring and evaluation in addition to routine HMIS. Among these are the diseases surveillance - case based, TB surveillance - case based, Immunisation registry - COVID vaccination, Health facility assessment
Much as capacity has been built over time for the National Core DHIS2 team to keep up with the latest versions on all these instances, it has been quite challenging majorly due to the limited resources to test latest DHIS2 versions for upgrade for most of the these instances. Several attempts have made to upgrade some, but have had some hi-cups due to required preparedness and time/resources required for testing.
With even some instances running versions like 2.33, the HISP Uganda team together with MoH HMIS and ICT teams organised a boot camp to document the process and upgrade all these instances to atleast 2.37 or even 2.38 for the some tracker implementation. Participants included MoH HMIS and ICT teams, MoH different user departments, Partners and stakeholders, Regional and District endusers, and facility representatives.
The process involved:-
- Documentation of functionality used by the different users to aide the process of testing after upgrade
- Sharing all the new functionality for versions from 2.33 to 2.38
- Developing test use case for all functionality identified
- Backing up instance, upgrading, testing and rolling upgrades to production
Outcomes
- Upgrade concept developed
- Functionality documented with appropriate test cases
- Upgrade process documented
- Six Instances upgraded to 2.37 and three instance upgraded to 2.38
Lessons Leant
- Key to have proper function documents of all the users
- Key to upgrade frequently to avoid huge costs of massive upgrades
Appreciation to MoH Uganda, HISP Uganda and financial support from the Global Fund HUB HIS/DHIS2 Systems strengthening support
