iHRIS Manage

“He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best”: Moving Past Obstacles to Strengthen the Health Workforce in Nigeria

Carol Bales — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:22:24 +0000

My recent journey to Imo State, Nigeria parallels the risks and difficulties that health workers endure while working in challenging environments in developing countries—yet with persistence and commitment, they are able to create structures for delivering quality health services.

In my case, I was traveling with a group to further efforts to strengthen human resources for health (HRH) at the state level. My team set out on a journey that would ordinarily take less than two hours but instead turned into 24 hours.

Author's name:

Agbonkhese Oaiya

Publication Date:

July 2013

Analyze Business Processes Before Automating Them: An iHRIS Manage Case Study

Carol Bales — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:30:41 +0000

This post was originally published on the iHRIS blog. CapacityPlus develops the core iHRIS software for managing and planning the health workforce. Over 15 countries are using iHRIS; Guatemala is one of the newest countries to implement the software. Marino Holguin is a consultant for the IntraHealth International-led USAID|Central America Capacity Project.

Over the years, automation of business processes has become more and more common. More often than not, organizations dive into automation hoping that, by itself, it will improve performance, reduce costs, and ensure quality. While those are attainable goals, they are rarely achieved. The reason for this lack of results is often related to a single painful issue: automating inefficient, outdated processes produces automated inefficiency.

Many process automation efforts are driven by information technology personnel who simply are not familiar with business needs and their history. This is particularly true for developing countries’ governmental institutions, which oversee processes that were originally based on paper forms and are often plagued by numerous controls and validations.

Author's name:

Marino Holguin

Publication Date:

May 2013

iHRIS: Where Are We Now?

Carol Bales — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:11:52 +0000

Global health workforce issues have only recently received focused attention in the field of international development. In 2006, the World Health Organization identified 57 countries that had a health workforce crisis, defined as having less than 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per thousand population. That same year, while working on the Capacity Project, we visited some of these health workforce crisis countries to see what tools and technologies countries were using to address their health workforce needs.

Author's name:

Shannon Turlington and Dykki Settle

Publication Date:

April 2012

Bringing Health Workforce Information to the Public in Uganda

Carol Bales — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:46:38 +0000

In Uganda, CapacityPlus works in collaboration with the Uganda Capacity Program and key country-level colleagues to strengthen the health workforce. This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

To bring the benefits of access to health worker information to the Ugandan public, the Ministry of Health, working closely with IntraHealth, organized a launch event earlier this month for the national human resources for health information system (HRHIS) in Uganda. The event highlighted the different functionalities of the system and the role HRHIS plays in the health system in Uganda. The event also marked a commitment by the Ministry of Health to increase transparency and accountability within the health sector.

The HRHIS is already being used widely. The system is operational at the Ministry of Health headquarters; all four health professional councils (the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council, Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council, the Pharmacy Council, and the Allied Health Professionals’ Council); Mulago and Butabika national referral hospitals; the 13 regional referral hospitals; and 69 local government districts. Getting to this point represents not only a large amount of planning and development of the open source software-based system, based on IntraHealth’s iHRIS Qualify and iHRIS Manage software, but also intense training sessions with system managers and users. With all this information now available, the time had come to make the wider public aware of the system’s existence and the benefits it provides.

Author's name:

Ismail Wadembere

Publication Date:

March 2012