iHRIS Train

iHRIS Train tracks and manages health worker training activities, including preservice education and in-service continuing education.

iHRIS Train was developed by teams in Uganda and Kenya to facilitate the management of health worker training programs. It provides a comprehensive view of health worker education, from preservice education at universities or training institutions through regular in-service training. While intended for use at the national level by the Ministry of Health or Ministry of Education, iHRIS Train may also be customized to meet the needs of training institutions, colleges and universities, examination bodies, implementing agencies, and professional councils.

Background

The education and training of a health workforce contributes to the quality of services that health workers provide to their communities. However, many countries lack information about health worker training, both preservice and in-service, making it difficult to track, plan, and manage training and deployment for the health workforce. This lack of coordination leads to health system inefficiencies and reduces health worker effectiveness.

iHRIS Train, the newest open-source application integrated into the iHRIS platform of health workforce information technologies, facilitates the management of health worker training programs. It enables decision-makers to collect, manage, and analyze training information for all health worker cadres. iHRIS Train supports a comprehensive view of health worker training, from preservice education at health training institutions through regular in-service trainings.

Benefits

iHRIS Train can be used by national governments, including the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education, as well as by training institutions such as colleges, universities, and examination bodies. Other potential users include implementing agencies or partners providing in-service training and professional councils.

  • Governments and facilities can gauge the pipeline of upcoming graduates who are potentially available to enter the health workforce. Users can then draw on this information to address health worker shortages and replenish workers who are exiting through retirement or attrition. Governments can use iHRIS Train to estimate overproduction and oversupply of health worker cadres as well.
  • iHRIS Train enables training institutions to track progress on curriculum implementation and student performance and collect information on faculty and tutors.
  • iHRIS Train is also suitable for tracking and assessing the in-service training experience of individual health workers. The system helps identify areas of in-service training that workers may need to learn and maintain new competencies relevant to their work environment.
  • The system facilitates coordination among various in-service training partners and stakeholders to improve in-service training efficiencies, reducing duplication of training instances and overtraining of individuals. This in turn improves equity among health workers.
  • iHRIS Train helps professional councils track approved credit hours under continuous professional development (CPD) or continuing medical education (CME) for licensure renewal.

Preservice Training Features

iHRIS Train makes it possible for users to track and assess five key aspects of preservice training:

  • Intake capacity: Track applicants by name, gender, location, cadre, and training institution.
  • Graduation: Track graduates by name, gender, training institution, location, cadre, and length of training.
  • Student attrition: Track dropout rates by student, gender, training institution, location, cadre, and reason for attrition.
  • Student progress:  Track student progress against curriculum and grades.
  • Faculty and tutors: Record information such as areas of expertise, number of years teaching, and professional history.

In-service Training Features

iHRIS Train also facilitates important features of in-service training, making it possible to:

  • Track in-service training instances: Record training content areas, location of training, length of training, modality, cost, and evaluations.
  • Manage tutors: Manage qualified tutors and facilitators for training.
  • Coordinate training instances: To improve in-service training efficiency, highlight trainings supported by multiple partners or stakeholders with overlapping content, tutors, training dates, and participants.
  • Manage and coordinate training participants: Track name, gender, cadre, employer, location, previous in-service training courses taken, and in-service courses needed.
  • Track CPD/CME credits: Access in-service training courses that qualify for CPD/CME credits.
  • Easily generate reports for donors: Export reports as graphs, Excel spreadsheets, or in other formats for donors and reporting sites.

Country Examples

A local team developed iHRIS Train in Uganda for the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, and health training institutions. Kenya is also deploying iHRIS Train to track preservice education and in-service training for health training institutions and the Ministry of Health. In Nigeria, CapacityPlus has customized the tool and presented it to the US Government (USG) Technical Working Group, which is interested in using iHRIS Train to track all in-service training provided by PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) implementing agencies in the country. The US Department of Defense has also expressed interest in using iHRIS Train to track their PEPFAR funded in-service training.