Linking Up to Use Health Information for Improving Health Outcomes
Dr. Alvin Marcelo, director of the University of the Philippines Manila National Telehealth Center, will present CapacityPlus’s iHRIS Manage software to the country’s secretary of health at a “Connectathon” on April 12. 
iHRIS Manage is designed for managing the health workforce—a Ministry of Health, district health office, or health care facility can use it to manage and analyze information about employed health workers and applicants. It is part of the larger iHRIS Suite of Open Source software that supplies health sector leaders with information to track, manage, and plan the health workforce. Since the software is Open Source, it can be downloaded for free and customized for specific country contexts.
The National Telehealth Center and the Department of Health will cohost the Connectathon. Dr. Marcelo and others will demonstrate to the Secretary established and forthcoming Open Source health applications for use in government health care facilities around the country. They will show how these applications—such as OpenMRS, DHIS 2, iHRIS, and a Community Health Information Tracking System developed by the University—can work together to produce aggregated health information that national health leaders can use to address health concerns and improve health outcomes.
As one example, Dr. Marcelo will show district disease prevalence statistics (from DHIS2) alongside the number and skill mix of health workers for the same district (from iHRIS Manage). He hopes the event will encourage the Secretary to support open standards and invest in building the capacity of staff at the Department of Health to implement and use the various systems.
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Photo courtesy of Dr. Alvin Marcelo
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