180 likes | 277 Views
“Designing” an IHIA. Health Information Systems; Integration and Interoperability. Conceptualizing Architecture. Architectures are not end-solutions, but approaches to manage complexity (e.g. city planning / regulation) Tension between short term solution and long term goal
E N D
“Designing” an IHIA Health Information Systems; Integration and Interoperability
Conceptualizing Architecture Architectures are not end-solutions, but approaches to manage complexity (e.g. city planning / regulation) • Tension between short term solution and long term goal • HIS architectures provide road maps or compass for “good design” Standards Prerequisite for integration and interoperability. Without shared “understanding” and meaning, no interoperability or integration
IHIA/HIS: Three Challenges Fragmentation of data sources • Different sub-systems, owned by different stakeholders Data-led, not action-led • Focus is on collecting and reporting data, rather than using if for decision making Centralization vs decentralization • Difficult to strike a balance (social & technical)
Some social causes of fragmentation • Statisticians/managers (data people) vs health workers (action people) • Medical (point of care) vs Public health (aggregate) • Proprietary systems vs Open source • Quick fixes vs Long term Strategy • Isolated systems vs IHIA • Donor Politics vs National Strategy
Statisticians vs Public Health “data represents an event” More is better vs Minimum Data Set & information pyramid Treatment of outliers Upward reporting bias (performance)
Medical vs public health Medical focus on patient record systems Disease based coding & classification – ICD10 Isolated (e.g. Excel) systems that do not talk with others Doctors as informaticians not as users Systems of limited scope and scale
Quick fixes vs long term strategy Ideal: long term, build local capacity / sustainability / maintainability – linked with education process BUT Vendors promise short term utopias Government officials typically short term – want to be remembered for reforms Aid projects often short term – pilots Hardware/software emphasized, not people and knowledge
Donor politics vsnational HMISrestructuring • Donors promoting own systems • Expatriates/experts • Not adopting integrated health systems framework HISP/DHIS2 from activists to regulators?
HIS/HIA: Integration “The process of making multiple subsystems appear as one single system” • Involves data, organizational behavior, workforce, and policies • Must be sustained over time through routine processes, and is not a one off technical process Example (DHIS2) District HIS designed to enable collection, collation, and analysis of HMIS & disease surveillance data across different subsystems but it does not have to be so…
Some benefits of integration Example Integrated Human Resource & Health service data Value added to data • New indicators possible • Enables cross-comparison • Ease of access Cost efficient • Professionalizing information management (e.g. cloud computing) • Pooling of resources (financial, human) • Economies of scale (training, hardware, software) • Centralized supporting activities (technical maintenance) • Decentralized core activities (public health decision making)
Interoperability and integration require standards Standardisation may be seen as going on at three levels of increasing complexity Three Levels of Standards --Organisational/ Political /pragmatic --Semantic --Syntactic /technical Compared to a telephone conversation Shared interests? Interested in talking? Shared language and shared understanding? Compatible telephones & networks? Increasing differences between views Programs / donors /agencies Agree to standardisation Shared / agreed indicators & meta data Increasing complexity Increasing complexity Unique id. SDMX-HD, etc. For each level; “solutions” based on solutions at level below, and rely on agreement at level above
Data Interoperability Data Interoperability / syntactic/ technical • Essential component to achieve integration • Interoperability; standardized data definitions for data exchange among sub systems Example • Shared data definitions among data collections tools (paper or software) across different subsystems, and standards for exchanging these data (e.g. XML,HL7, SDMX-HD) Shared data standards and indicators, are the primary building block of the IHIA
Four (uneven) processes of change in the IHIA From paper to computer / mobile phone From stand-alone to networked computers From paper registers to electronic patient records From offline to online (web-based HMIS) Scaling in uneven contexts: Do we need to cover all forms? Do we need to cover all reproting units? If not, useless?
Centralization, decentralization and hybrid models • Who makes decisions? • Who controls budget? • Where does the data reside? (political/technical/managerial) • Does implementation start at top, or bottom? These questions have implications on: • User involvement (not always empowering) • Use of information for decision making