Use of DHIS2 Customized Apps in Improving Data Collection, Monitoring and Reporting System in USAID SAFE supported facilities and reporting into DATIM (PEPFAR)

Greetings my name is Lombe Kalima from Zambia, I am the Data Management and Strategic Information Advisor for John Snow Inc working on the USAID Supporting an AIDS-Free Era (SAFE) project in Zambia
I invite you to join me as I present my Abstract during the conference, below are the details of the conference:

  • Session Title: DHIS2 and PEPFAR
  • Date and time WEDNESDAY June 22 from 15:35 to 16:20**

The United States President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), issues a Monitoring Evaluation and Reporting guide (MER) every year as a basis for Monitoring Evaluation and Reporting. The MER defines indicators to be collected and how data is collected at different reporting periods quarterly, semi Annual, Annual.

USAID SAFE; project was using an offline, labor intensive and time-consuming system, that use excel, MS Access and SQL server platforms, for data collection, aggregation and reporting. During reporting periods (quarterly, semiannual and Annual) these files were collected from the heath facilities, merged and aggregated into once file, which was later imported into the database (MS Access and SQL Server) for generation of reports for manual data entry, and possible import into DATIM. The goal of the integration and use of the App was to allow seamless, quick, efficient and effective way of generating and creating the import files required for DATIM by use of customized Apps that have been mapped to different datasets needed for reporting. In order to make the DATIM extraction easy and efficient, the App has been configured to allow mapping of Indicators, facilities, datasets and data elements to DATIM uids and codes. The App allows and accommodates multiple reports through a setting feature that allows setup and configurations of reports such as HFR, Quarterly, Sem Annual etc. The App allows for data quality checks to be performed to the generated data before export to DATIM csv file. With the use of an API the App allows for DATIM csv import file to be generated which is later used for DATIM data import.

The use of DHIS2 platform (ECHO), has improved data collection, aggregation in 302 health facilities supported by USAID SAFE project. DHIS2 (ECHO), has reduced time spent cleaning data by the Strategic Information Officers and Managers from about 10days to about 5days (50%) per reporting period. DHIS2 (ECHO) has also reduced time spent cleaning, preparing and generating DATIM import files with the use of customized Apps. The customized Apps allows the project to filter the required reports by click of button and generate the report for DATIM import. Using DHIS2 Apps for report generation has reduced the time spent preparing the quarterly, Semi-Annual, Annual to about 50% the time spent. Use of customized has greatly reduced the cost and allowed for error free reports because of dataset validation embedded in the Apps and system. DHIS2 (ECHO) is now been used as the main data warehouse for historical data. Changes in indicators (MER) guide, merging of facilities in MOH and DATIM has proved to be a challenge with regards making changes to the App, however the App settings and setup helps in configurations. Use of customized Apps in ECHO has reduced the time spent on aggregation and generation for DATIM reporting.

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Indeed DHIS2 has been great game changer for USAID JSI SAFE.

Very informative! Thamks for sharing @Lombe :+1: