News & Updates

For staff of the Christian Social Services Commission (CSSC) in Tanzania, the Capacity Project conducted two training sessions in the use of geographic information systems (GIS) for the management of health facilities and the health workforce. Held in April, the sessions included such topics as applied data utilization, data collection, collaboration and data sharing. In a two-day training, four senior CSSC staff learned about using freely...

On April 5, Dr. Pamela McQuide and Dykki Settle gave a presentation of the Capacity Project’s iHRIS Suite of software products at the 2008 Berkeley Conference on the Global Health Workforce: From Evidence and Research to Public and Health Care Industry Policy. The presentation, “Measuring and Monitoring the Health Workforce using Open Source Tools,” explored the ways the Capacity Project has used free Open Source software to develop and...

Open Source Software (OSS) is distributed under a license that gives users the freedom to run, study, modify and redistribute the code without restriction. Linux’s operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database and PHP hypertext processing language are examples of common OSS in use today.OSS can be easily customized to meet specific needs and can be deployed on small and large settings, such as high performance hardware platforms and...

During a March and April 2008 visit to Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar several groups expressed interest in iHRIS Manage. First, Zanzibar is now running a customized version of the software on their new server. They requested assistance with additional customizations and intend to send three people to PHP training with Capacity's funding assistance in order to make these customizations themselves in future. Zanzibar already has a data collection and...

As a public healthcare management professional and a former intern with IntraHealth, I have had the opportunity to work with human resources information systems (HRIS). I believe an HRIS is a robust, simple and easy-to-manage tool that Tanzania can utilize for efficient healthcare workforce management.Tanzania has a healthcare workforce deficit compared to its workforce influx, attrition, and population growth. At the same time, HIV prevalence is...

One of the goals of the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services (MOHSS) is to strengthen the electronic human resources information system (HRIS) located in the Office of the Prime Minister and expand it to all ministries and eventually the districts. With support from the Capacity Project, which purchased nine computers and a server and hired data entrants, the MOHSS is transferring its paper records into electronic format. The other 25...

Namibia is proving to be a model of government cooperation as they roll out their HRIS. The Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) purchased an Oracle-based product which will be used in all Ministries for human resources and financial information. The Ministry of Health is working to adopt this system by transfering their paper-based HR records into electronic format. When they finish entering the 8,000+ records the OPM will assist with a data...

In February, the Southern Africa Human Capacity Development Coalition (a Capacity Project Associate Award) assisted the Swaziland Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in conducting a workshop on Data-Driven Decision-Making (DDDM). Building on lessons learned from the Capacity Project’s DDDM workshop in Uganda, facilitators helped 28 public-health managers to understand information already available from their human resources information system...

We are very pleased to announce the release of versions 3.0 of iHRIS Qualify and iHRIS Manage. Live demonstrations of each have been posted to this website. Visit the iHRIS Manage page or the iHRIS Qualify page to test out the new features. You’ll see the introduction of configurable modules and increased report functionality. Once you've logged into the software demo, click on ‘Create Reports’ on the left hand toolbar and choose a report that...

The Capacity Project has published a two-page brief on the results of the Health Workforce Planning Model Workshop, held in Washington, D.C., December 13-14, 2007. The brief summarizes the decisions made in the workshop, including the workforce planning model and priority software features selected for the iHRIS Plan software, currently under development. For more information about the workshop and its results, visit the full HRH Workforce...