Worksheet: HIS Assessment Survey

Objective

Conduct an assessment survey of existing HIS. Review the country’s eHealth strategy, if there is one, and document any policies that need to be followed.

To conduct a broad-based assessment of the national HRIS, we recommend Assessing the National Health Information System: An Assessment Tool produced by the Health Metrics Network. You may also use the HIS Assessment Survey provided as a supplemental tool when assessing each HIS or activity found in the country. At the end of the template is a guide to different business domains where HIS may be located.

Assessing the Health Information System: Concepts

The HRIS will be a sub-component of the country’s HIS or eHealth architecture. Situating iHRIS within the larger HIS supports analysis of health worker information in the broader health context.

For this assessment, take a high-level qualitative inventory of all HIS, as well as any support national strategies or policies for eHealth. These include electronic health records, logistics and supply chain management, disease surveillance, laboratory management, and e-learning for health. By widening the assessment, you can identify the needs that other HIS have for HRH data, which may not be obvious. This assessment will reveal which systems iHRIS will need to link to in order to share data.

A secondary goal is to determine whether any strategies, policies, or standards exist that will affect the system requirements. These policies are usually described in a national eHealth strategy document.  They may apply in the following areas:

  • national vision, principles, and information policies, including those on privacy and data security
  • hardware standards
  • network and data exchange protocols
  • data standards, such as existing reference tables
  • common service applications
  • functional requirements for health applications
Tool filenames (offline version): Assessessing_National_HIS (folder; link above) and Tool0-D.doc; download tool (requires Internet connection)