News & Updates

I recently came across an interview with Jakob Nielsen, who has been referred to as the ‘king of usability.’ The article is from 2007, but the content is still relevant for companies, developers, and others interested in ensuring their website and/or software is user friendly. It’s particularly pertinent to the Capacity Project HRIS team’s work right now -- a few months ago we embarked on a plan to improve the usability of our HR software, the...

On May 28, the HRIS Strengthening team’s Carl Leitner gave a presentation on training and capacity development as part of the global e-health track of the American Medical Informatics Association’s Spring Congress in Orlando, Florida. The conference, “People and Populations: Translation to Transformation,” focused on informatics advancements that are transforming health care around the world. Leitner’s session, “Using Free Technologies to Develop...

On May 27, the Capacity Project hosted an auxiliary event, “Health Workforce: Using Better Data, Making Better Decisions,” at the Global Health Council conference in Washington, DC.Focusing on the Project’s human resources information systems (HRIS) strengthening process, experts led participants in small group and one-on-one discussions about the HRIS Strengthening Implementation Toolkit, stakeholder leadership groups, iHRIS software, data...

In addition to showcasing the HRIS strengthening process and work, our auxiliary event, “Health Workforce: Using Better Data, Making Better Decisions” offered great opportunity to receive feedback from the global health community. I was ideally situated at the back of the room covering the data-driven decision-making (DDDM) table. While talking to a colleague from Tanzania I noted you can walk through the strengthening process as you stroll the...

I attended an interesting session in the policy series entitled: Advocating for Research. Although the speakers focused on vaccine research, I found that many of the points they made had direct application to our work.We do not think of collecting HR data to feed HRIS as conducting research, since the data are collected for management purposes and not for research purposes. However, as with much public health research, the ultimate goal of an...

This is my first time to attend the GHC and I've had a blast — it has been more fun than I expected to be around so many people excited about and doing similar work.Listening to great speakers like Hans Rosling of Gapminder.org is always fun and entertaining. Hans promotes a fact-based world in a way that challenges a lot of our assumptions about the world and isn't afraid to kill sacred cows. “You should forbid the discussion of ‘HIV in Africa'”...

I'm new to the NGO environment and pretty exited and pleased with the good work that is being done - my thought is more that we as advisors and implementers must not forget to keep on asking and taking time to understand the real need of the recipients before we get stuck in advising and implementing solutions.

The Capacity Project HRIS Team has been very busy lately, recently hosting two very important events: our first regional Africa HRIS/DDDM workshop and an auxiliary event at this week's Global Health Council conference.In April, the Capacity Project collaborated with the East, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA) Health Community and WHO to conduct the “Africa Regional Meeting on Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS): Taking Stock, Sharing...

Back in January, I was invited to participate as a Technical Leader for this year’s Global Health Council Conference: New Technologies + Proven Strategies = Healthy Communities Many conversations, meetings, planning, and emails later, this week we stand in the midst of the best GHC Conference I have yet attended.Already this week I have heard great panels on mHealth, eLearning, and open source for global health, subjects you know are near and...

The second plenary session I attended was called "The Big Choice: The Successes and Challenges of Open Source Technology." The panelists were Karl Brown from the Rockefeller Foundation, Paul Biondich of OpenMRS, Alexandre Rideau of Reseau African d'Education pour la Sante and our own Pape Gaye, CEO of IntraHealth International.While the panelists were careful to say that they were not open source evangelists, they spent a lot more time talking...