News & Updates

Until now, many of Uganda’s 180,000 community health workers have gone unaccounted for in the formal health system. Who are they? What services are they providing, and who trained them? The Uganda Ministry of Health is using a new registry—developed using IntraHealth International’s open source iHRIS software—to find out. The registry tracks critical personnel data that answer these questions, and its implementation is one of the first steps in a...

The Department of Health of Jharkhand, India, is using the mSakhi mobile app as part of its ambitious program to screen clients in Ranchi district for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) with a focus on hypertension and diabetes. One in four Indians is at risk of dying prematurely—that is, before the age of 70—from an NCD, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). India is the first country to adapt the WHO’s global monitoring framework to...

In Kenya, the health workforce data provided through the integrated human resources information system (iHRIS) is turning fortunes around. When Kenya decentralized its health system management from one national hub to 47 individual county governments in 2013, young county departments of health found themselves struggling. They needed to identify, track, and monitor their workforces while facing looming staff shortages, labor disputes, and high...

Thanks to the power of data, government officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) discovered that 27% of health workers receiving government salaries and 42% of those receiving risk allowances in two large provinces—Kasaï Central and Kasaï—were ghost workers. In response, the Ministry of Public Health rapidly reallocated funds to cover 781 salaries and 2,613 risk allowances for real health workers, such as nurses and midwives who...

I’ve done my share of training district health officers and others in low-resource settings. I know that the vast majority of health workers who report data in district offices or health facilities in the low- and middle-income countries where IntraHealth International works are on congested 2G mobile networks in small towns. Which means they’re waiting—waiting for web applications to load over poor Internet connections. Complete and accurate...

When a country uses the iHRIS software to manage their human resources for health, they sometimes get a bonus. iHRIS can provide data connections that offer unexpected benefits for the managers and leaders of a health care system. Sometimes, just comparing data between iHRIS and another system can save money—a lot of money. But it takes some detective work. Oh, not the kind that involves trench coats and fedoras. The kind that takes patience and...

Human beings do weird things sometimes. Or maybe the things we do as individuals only seem weird to others because they don’t know our particular quirks, preferences, and priorities. Think about it: Why do you live where you live? How did you choose your job? What makes you go back to work day after day? The answers are different for us all. Maybe we want to live close to our family. Maybe we love the city life, or our hometown is the only place...

Digital health interventions benefit enormously when implementers document and learn from past and current digital health projects. This is where knowledge management (KM) can help. Knowledge management is a systematic practice that helps you learn from others and helps others outside your project learn from you. It is an inherently social process, largely dependent on making sure systems and processes are in place and staff are incentivized to...

A 2015 study revealed that 50% of health workers in Uganda’s public sector weren’t showing up, or came to work but left early to collect dual pay at another facility. Today, that number is down to 11.9%, thanks to a new monitoring system that helps health officials track and analyze attendance data and take appropriate actions against chronically absent staff. Health worker absenteeism undermines staff morale and the quality of care patients...

Allison Annette Foster was enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with her family in Dallas when her phone chimed. Her cheer faded as a clinical emergency began to unfold in a string of text messages among a group of nurses eight time zones away. It was the middle of the night in rural Zambia, and a 39-year-old pregnant woman had arrived at a local health post. A young nurse there was alone, as is often the case, and unsure of what to do. So he grabbed his...