Information Systems for Emergency Diseases Emergency Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic - supporting global and national surveillance

  • Funded by The Research Council of Norway (RCN)
  • Total publications:0 publications

Grant number: 312776

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Key facts

  • Disease

    COVID-19
  • Start & end year

    2020
    2022
  • Known Financial Commitments (USD)

    $545,781.74
  • Funder

    The Research Council of Norway (RCN)
  • Principal Investigator

    Kristin Braa
  • Research Location

    Norway
  • Lead Research Institution

    UNIVERSITETET I OSLO, DET MATEMATISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE FAKULTET, Institutt for informatikk
  • Research Priority Alignment

    N/A
  • Research Category

    Health Systems Research

  • Research Subcategory

    Health information systems

  • Special Interest Tags

    N/A

  • Study Type

    Clinical

  • Clinical Trial Details

    Not applicable

  • Broad Policy Alignment

    Pending

  • Age Group

    Adults (18 and older)

  • Vulnerable Population

    Unspecified

  • Occupations of Interest

    Health PersonnelOther

Abstract

The main objective of this project was to support low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with appropriate health information systems, enabling them to respond to rapidly changing information needs during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent disease outbreaks. The project centered on DHIS2, the world's largest HMIS platform, used by Ministries of Health in 73 LMICs with 58 national-scale deployments. One of the countries in the consortium, Ghana, adopted the Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System (SORMAS). The project consisted of a study of HMIS for COVID-19 tracking in Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Kenya, Ghana and Norway, with the following objectives: (1) assessment of experience with the use of HMIS for COVID-19 surveillance among infection trackers, health managers and national HIS administrators; (2) preparation and use of a data quality evaluation protocol; (3) comparison of HMIS usage experiences across countries; (4) preparation of recommendations to strengthen and improve HMIS for covid-19 surveillance. This research led us to understand the assessment of COVID-19 surveillance platforms in five countries, four of which used the DHIS2 system and one, Ghana, using SORMAS. The project provided important insights into how contact tracers, health managers and national health implementers used digital platforms for disease surveillance, noting features and patterns associated with key variables including simplicity, acceptance of technology and the quality of data collected. Findings on the two platforms have high value for disease surveillance, especially as technologies increasingly participate in the implementation of infection tracing in low-resource environments.