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-19Start & end year
20202022Known Financial Commitments (USD)
$545,781.74Funder
The Research Council of Norway (RCN)Principal Investigator
Kristin BraaResearch Location
NorwayLead Research Institution
UNIVERSITETET I OSLO, DET MATEMATISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE FAKULTET, Institutt for informatikkResearch 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.