iHRIS: A Year of Development

August 2011 by Carol Bales and the iHRIS Team
TAGS: HR Information Systems, ICT, Open Source

Carol BalesWe know that most “year in review” articles are published in January, coinciding with the new calendar year, but the year that’s been consuming our thoughts just ended. CapacityPlus’s second fiscal year wrapped up in June and, since we’ve been concentrating on iHRIS development over the last year for our year-end reporting, we thought we’d post a summary of our accomplishments.

Following the “release early, release often” philosophy that encourages user feedback, we published 11 new releases of our iHRIS Qualify and iHRIS Manage software. We added new capabilities focused on improving the usability of the software, expanding translation support, enhancing our reporting module for data analysis and use, and, of course, fixing bugs.

New modules and features related to health workforce management advanced the software from tracking health workers to integrating routine HR functionalities for better day-to-day management of health workers. Additional developments enable the iHRIS software to more easily integrate with other health information systems, such as DHIS 2 (a district health management information system) and OpenMRS (a medical records system), to allow for the aggregation of health workforce data with health delivery information and disease statistics.

With better translation support, the languages included in the last release (version 4.0.16) included Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, and Tagalog.

We also announced a major release candidate to the global iHRIS community for review, testing, and feedback, which is anticipated for release in September and will improve security and accessibility of the software. It adds enhanced database security to enable two important functions:

  • Self-service: HR managers and system administrators will be able to allow health workers to view the details of their own records and submit changes
  • Geographic- and facility-based HR staff controls: HR managers and system administrators will be able to associate an iHRIS user with a facility, ward, district, or region. Then the user will have the ability to modify the personnel records for employees within that location, while protecting personnel records from employees that should not have access. This functionality greatly enhances the use of iHRIS in a decentralized environment where facilities and districts maintain and use their own data, while still permitting aggregation and management of data at the central level.

For highlights of each release from August 2010 through June 2011, see our Global HRIS Strengthening subsite.

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