The Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners’ Council (UMDPC) recently launched a new mobile directory, which provides information Ugandans can use to seek health services from qualified health workers at qualified facilities. By combining health workforce data with mobile phone technology, the system also allows council staff and health facility managers to easily verify health professionals’ credentials and cut down on unqualified practitioners.
The health workforce data is captured in iHRIS Qualify, a health worker registration and licensure tracking system developed and supported by CapacityPlus . iHRIS Qualify is part of the larger Suite of open source software. Over a dozen countries in Africa and Asia are implementing the iHRIS software products and contributing to their development. In some countries, like Uganda, other USAID-funded projects are providing technical assistance.
All medical and dental practitioners in Uganda are required to register with the UMDPC and obtain an annual practicing license. Unfortunately, many are not properly registered while others have no valid license. On top of this, some people pose as medical practitioners without appropriate training, which can result in poor quality or harmful health services, and has led to many complaints filed with the council.
The Uganda Capacity Program —headed by CapacityPlus lead partner IntraHealth International —works with the UMDPC in various ways, including supporting iHRIS Qualify at the council and helping to develop the mobile directory.
Records on 3,877 doctors and dentists are available in the council’s iHRIS Qualify system. Now, using SMS technology, this information can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the country. All one needs to do is type “doctor” followed by a health worker’s name into a mobile phone, and send it to the council. Information received will indicate if the doctor or dentist has registered, has a current license, and has a specialty. Similar information can be determined for more than 3,500 facilities.
The Uganda Capacity Program plans to tailor the service for the other health professional councils in the country: the Pharmacy Council, the Allied Health Workers’ Council, and the Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council.
We are pleased to announce the release of iHRIS Manage and iHRIS Qualify 4.0.21
A part of the iHRIS Suite of software, iHRIS Manage maintains health worker deployment, performance, and attrition information while iHRIS Qualify tracks training, certification, and licensure.
Final Feature Release
In order to concentrate our development efforts on the 4.1 series of iHRIS, this will be our final feature release for iHRIS in the 4.0 Series. The only new releases of 4.0.X will be to address high-priority security issues or critical bugs.
Release Changes
This release includes several improvements and bug fixes, including:
• Reports generate much much faster
• Bug causing a failure on a system update 853936
A complete list of changes since version 4.0.19 can be found here: http://www.ihris.org/wiki/IHRIS_Suite_4.0_Development#4.0.21
New Documentation
New documentation can be found on our wiki:
• Decentralized iHRIS Structure (Thanks Sovello!)
http://www.ihris.org/wiki/Decentralized_iHRIS_Structure
• Generating Reports Periodically
http://www.ihris.org/wiki/Generate_Reports_Automatically
• Archiving Reports Automatically
http://www.ihris.org/wiki/Archive_Reports_Automatically
New Code Bounties
iHRIS Development is a team effort. We appreciate all the help you have given us with bug reporting, documentation and coding. We are now starting to offer code bounties to help encourage more development and documentation of the iHRIS Software.
• XML Representation of Field Data: http://www.capacityplus.org/hris/blog/index.php/2011/12/code-bounty-xml-representation-of-field-data/
• Translation into Arabic: http://www.capacityplus.org/hris/blog/index.php/2011/12/code-bounty-english-to-arabic-translations/
If you are interested in the code bounties, please contact Brooke Buchanan at bbuchanan@capacityplus.org for details on the application process.
Installation
For complete installation instructions, please visit this link:
http://www.ihris.org/wiki/Linux_%28Ubuntu%29_Installation
For your convenience we have included links to important downloads:
• iHRIS Suite:
http://launchpad.net/i2ce/4.0/4.0.21/+download/ihris-suite-4.0.21.tar.bz2
• iHRIS Qualify:
http://launchpad.net/ihris-qualify/4.0/4.0.21/+download/ihris-qualify-full-4.0.21.tar.bz2
• iHRIS Manage:
http://launchpad.net/ihris-manage/4.0/4.0.19/+download/ihris-manage-full-4.0.19.tar.bz2
Translations
Thanks goes out to the launchpad and translatewiki translation community for continuing to support translation of iHRIS. The complete list of language options in 4.0.21 includes Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Malian French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, and Tagalog.
Code Bounty: XML Representation of Field Data
Scope of Work
1. Background and Objectives
CapacityPlus, the USAID global flagship project for human resources for health, has been globally supporting human resources information system (HRIS) strengthening. XML representation of field data would create a standard way of representing form field data safely as structured xml. It would be used by the custom reporting module whenever export as XML is chosen. This would be added for version 4.1 of I2CE/iHRIS. Currently the reporting system for iHRIS exports data in XML in an unsafe way, namely it dumps out the database value. For the currently limited uses of XML report this has not been too problematic. However, there are some issues that need to be resolved so that XML based report exports can be more readily implemented and fully utilized. These issues include:
• Potential for exported data to itself can xml data which would make the xml export invalid
• Inability to export binary data (such as PDF files or photos) in a readable format
• XSLT manipulation of structured data (such a mapped fields) is painful and ugly and prone to breakage as it can only the simple string manipulation functions available
Note: This will break existing XSLT transforms of exported XML data. In particular of the transforms used by Kenya and Zanzibar would need to be updated before they upgrade to 4.1 of iHRIS. This is intentional as we would now be able to use xpath queries to get at the needed data rather than perform string manipulations.
2. Responsibilities and Detailed List of Tasks
• Work Closely with CapacityPlus/iHRIS team
• Maintain contact with iHRIS team throughout assignment
• Work with key staff to identify needed resources
3. Methodology and Available Resource Materials
The chosen candidate will have access to CapacityPlus and HRIS team members as well as all needed software and documentation including:
http://www.ihris.org/wiki/Standard_XML_Representations_of_Field_Data
4. Deliverables and Reports
The main deliverables of the assignment will be:
Fully functional, documented, and tested code that implements the code requirements as defined in:
http://www.ihris.org/wiki/Standard_XML_Representations_of_Field_Data
• Updates to the XSLT transforms used by Kenya and Zanzibar for SDMX-HD (see links below)
https://code.launchpad.net/~zanzibar-his/zanzibar-sdmx-hd/trunk
https://code.launchpad.net/~his-interop/kenya-sdmx-hd/trunk
5. Location
Global
6. Period of Performance
The assignment will take place during December 2011-February 2012
7. Qualifications
• Experience in creating new forms in iHRIS
• Experience in object oriented PHP
• Experience with XML
8. Submitting Applications
The interested candidates who are qualified should send their CVs and cover letter to Brooke Buchanan at bbuchanan@intrahealth.org before December 29, 2011. Cover letters should include the expected number of days to complete the assignment, expected daily rate in US $ at 8 hrs/day. Please note, daily rates less than $50 are preferred.
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