Happy new year! The DHIS2 implementation team is pleased to share a round-up of new modules and improvements made to the DHIS2 Health Data Toolkit in 2023.
We also revamped our websites and improved the way we organize and share content with the community:
- Visit our Health Domain Webpage for impact stories and priority focus areas for strengthening DHIS2 and integrated HIS to achieve universal coverage of primary health care.
- A new webpage Surveillance, Early Warning & Health Emergencies highlights the use of DHIS2 for preventing, detecting, and responding to public health threats
- The DHIS2 Health Data Toolkit page consolidates implementation resources for common health use cases such as system design and implementation planning guides, reference metadata, custom applications, interoperability tools and user guides/training material developed to promote global guidelines & standards in partnership with WHO, UNICEF and CDC among others.
- Downloadable metadata packages are now available through an interactive widget to allow easy searching by health area, use case, software compatibility version and language.
- HMIS demo: integrated HIS demo instance focused on optimizing the public health end user experience, exploring DHIS2 for integrated HIS and program-specific use cases and referencing global WHO & UNICEF recommended analysis products
Highlights and new content are summarized below. Check out the metadata downloads page for updated DHIS2 v40 compatibility releases.
Tracker Design Guide for Person-Centered Monitoring: The Tracker design guides is a detailed step-by-step guide for designing and configuring DHIS2 tracker programs for person-centered and case-based health programs such as HIV, ANC tracking, or notifiable diseases. Design principles include formative ideation, defining the tracked entity, program stage structure, designing for tracker analytics, and interaction design. The design guide is complemented by common metadata typically shared between health-related Tracker programs which is available for download as part of the Common HIS Metadata library.
Health Facility Profile: The DHIS2 Health Profile tool empowers health facilities to self-report key information about service availability and readiness, fosters accessibility and utilization of facility data across health programs to optimize access to primary to healthcare services and to respond effectively and efficiently to health emergencies. Metadata is aligned with WHO Harmonized Health Facility Assessment (HHFA) questionnaires and optimized for semi-routine collection and monitoring.
Mortality & ICD-11 Cause of Death Reporting App: Developed by HISP Vietnam with WHO DDI, the ICD-11 Cause of Death app enables digitizing the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCOD) in DHIS2 and the automation of ICD-11 coding based on the underlying cause of death using WHO’s ICD-11 API and DORIS coding tool. The app currently supports English and French, with the capacity for translating to other languages.
Community Health: A new version of the CHIS toolkit is available with updated metadata and improved guidance for designing for the integration of community and facility data, working with composite indicators, and managing org unit hierarchies. These resources were developed in partnership with UNICEF and WHO to support global CHW strategic information guidelines, with lessons learned from MOH Liberia and Guinea Bissau.
HIV: A major new release of the DHIS2 toolkit is available aligned with the WHO’s 2022 [Consolidated guidelines on person-centred HIV strategic information: strengthening routine data for impact] and SMART Guidelines L2 Digital Adaptation Kit. The toolkit includes HIV standard indicators and dashboards at national district and facility levels, HIV prevention tracker and HIV Case Surveillance Tracker for person-centered monitoring, and DAK mapping resources.
Tuberculosis: A major new release of the TB HMIS module aligns with new WHO strategic information guidelines (2023). The case-based surveillance tracker has been improved to support localized workflows and lab data integration; and a newly launched Tracker program facilitates household contact tracing for active case detection and prevention. Enhancements to the existing case surveillance tracker ensure alignment with the data collected for the index case of household contacts to improve linkages between case surveillance and prevention activities.
Malaria: New content updates and compatibility upgrades for malaria surveillance tracker in elimination settings, HMIS dashboards, sub-national/district analyses, and data quality dashboard. Linkages between entomology and vector control packages are also addressed in the guidance for integration of malaria program data with routine HMIS.
Entomology & Vector Control: New modules for ITN distribution and insecticide residual spraying campaigns (household registration, microplanning, real-time monitoring and campaign outcome data) with improved guidance documentation on integrating campaign outcome data with national malaria programme data within the HMIS.
Campaigns & Supplemental Immunization Activities: In support of GAVI focus areas on targeting and real-time monitoring of SIAs and WHO guidelines with implementation insights from the DHIS2 Community of Practice, new modules for immunization campaign data collection, coverage surveys, and rapid convenience monitoring events have been introduced to improve triangulation for targeting zero-dose children and under-immunized communities. These modules include dedicated dashboards, triangulations with routine data, and comprehensive documentation to enhance SIAs data collection and analysis within countries’ HMIS.
Sensory Functions (Eye & Ear Care): A new module for integrating eye & ear care indicators into the national HMIS to improve service availability, utilization, quality, and coverage.
Acute Febrile Illness (AFI) Surveillance: Based on CDC recommended protocols, AFI surveillance tracker programs allows staff at facilities to screen and enroll AFI cases into the surveillance program, capture demographic, risk factors and exposures, and link laboratory results. Dashboards have been designed to support monitoring of the surveillance system and trends in pathogen detection.
ANC Tracker: Using the WHO’s ANC Digital Adaptation Kit, a collaboration between HISP Centre, Makerere University School of Public Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, HISP Uganda, and the University of Bergen developed a DHIS2 Tracker based on the DAK to support person-centered monitoring and individualized follow-up of pregnant women through recommended ANC services.
Nutrition: A minor update to the nutrition module for integrating routine nutrition indicators in HMIS contains improvements in naming conventions for community and facility indicators and updates to indicator definitions, developed in partnership with UNICEF.
Data Quality: The Data Quality Toolkit for DHIS2 combines guidance and core features to improve the quality of routine data at all levels, such as point-of-entry validation rules, establishing min-max values, conducting outlier analysis, comparing internal consistency, and analyzing completeness and timeliness. The toolkit helps to operationalize key components of the WHO’s Data Quality Assurance framework.
A special thank you to the many investors and partners who have supported this work: The Global Fund, Gavi, Norad, CDC, WHO and UNICEF.
We hope you enjoy these new resources. Please share more about your use cases and local innovations with us on the Community of Practice!
| Resource | Link |
|---|---|
| DHIS2 Health Data Toolkit | dhis2.org/health-data-toolkit: browse all resources available by health area or use case |
| DHIS2 for Health Design Documentation | docs.dhis2.org/en/implement: system design guides, implementation guidance, training materials and user guides tailored to public health use cases |
| Metadata Downloads | dhis2.org/metadata-downloads |
| Community of Practice | Implementation Community: share your use cases and implementation experiences |
| HMIS Demo | demos.dhis2.org/hmis: browse all health-related dashboards, data collection modules, etc. that use WHO standards and global guidance |
Warm regards,
The DHIS2 Health Team