News & Updates

The Capacity Project is hosting an auxiliary event at the 2007 Global Health Council conference in Washington, DC: "From Grassroots to Global: Partnerships to Strengthen Human Resources for Health." The event will take place on May 29, 2007, 5-7 p.m. Please join us to explore how global, regional and local collaboration can help address key human resources for health (HRH) issues such as strengthening HR information systems.The session will begin...

Lesotho’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare is monitoring and tracking the country’s health workforce using a human resources information system (HRIS) set up by the Capacity Project in April. Ministry staff received training in the management, maintenance and reporting of deployment data using the new system. Project staff also assessed additional HRIS needs at the Ministry and the Lesotho National Health Training Center.

In April 2007 a Capacity Project developer visited the MoHSW in Lesotho to develop and implement a step solution HRIS. This consultant successfully migrated their current Excel-based HRIS to a fully functioning Access database. The Access database captures all information currently collected and provides reporting capabilities exceeding those previously available in the Excel-based system. Thanks to data entry process improvements introduced with...

At the midpoint of the five-year Capacity Project, team members gathered in Washington, DC, for a technical review and workshop on the Project's efforts to strengthen human resources for health (HRH) to support key services in family planning, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS treatment and care. Held April 16-19, the workshop provided staff with an actively shared knowledge base in order to optimize effectiveness during the second half of the...

During January-March of 2007, the Capacity Project began assistance to strengthen human resources information systems (HRIS) in Southern Sudan. High-level officials from the Ministry of Health and all ten states attended a national HRIS stakeholder leadership meeting, which resulted in a commitment to form centralized and state-level HR leadership groups and develop a complete HRIS. As an initial step, the Project has assessed the existing health...

The Capacity Project has released free, open-source software designed to help countries strengthen and sustain human resources information systems (HRIS) for workforce planning, tracking and management. An online demonstration is available at www.capacityproject.org/hris. The Project has successfully applied its HRIS strengthening approach in Namibia, Rwanda, Swaziland and Uganda, and has ongoing HRIS activities in Kenya, Lesotho, Southern Sudan...

We had a great time last week (April 16-19, 2007) at the Capacity Project Technical Development Workshop and one-day Mini-University demonstrating iHRIS Manage and officially launching our HRIS Strengthening website and the online iHRIS Manage demo. The purpose of the Workshop was to share our lessons learned and remaining technical challenges in all of the Capacity Project's HRH activities. During the Workshop and Mini-University, which were...

A demonstration version of iHRIS Manage Version 2.0 has been made available on this website. To try iHRIS Manage for yourself, click the green Demo button and log in with the username and password demo.The demonstration version contains sample data from the fictional country of Taifafeki, representing part of the health workforce and other employees of the Ministry of Health. Try running reports or modifying employee records to learn how iHRIS...

The Capacity Project will be hosting a weeklong Technical Action/Development Workshop in Washington, DC, next week to include Project staff, partners and guests from USAID. On Thursday, April 19, we will hold a "mini-university," during which we will demonstrate version 2.0 of iHRIS Manage. In advance of the workshop, we are officially launching the HRIS Strengthening Website.The Website is intended as a comprehensive resource for learning about...

Ministers of Health from 14 countries in East, Central and Southern Africa have adopted resolutions supporting the development of national health workforce observatories (PDF) and acknowledging that strong human resources information systems are necessary for informed policy decisions. The officials passed the resolutions during the 44th Conference of Health Ministers in Arusha, Tanzania, March 12-16. The Capacity Project helped to establish a...