Master Health Facilities Register

[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Hi all,

We are in the process of developing a Master Health facility Register system for the Ministry of Health in Malawi. We are currently trying to gather requirements for our system and as such, we'd like to do a comparative analysis of different facilities registers currently implemented in various countries (Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Philippines, e.t.c.) globally. Thus, we seek your assistance on how we could gather the information below as it has proven to be a stumbling block in requirements gathering process: 

Wherever possible, we'd like to know:

1. The server specifications(RAM, Hard disk space, Operating system and processor speed) on which the system is running

2. The programming language used to code the System

3. How the coding of the facilities was implemented i.e the format used.

4. The linkage that is there between this system and other third party systems / benefits of this Health facility registry

5. The challenges the might have been faced during the development and how they were resolved.

Your assistance in this regard will be highly appreciated.

[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Good day Wendy,

Thank you very much for your assistance, you're a star. Perhaps I should rephrase one part highlighted in red as it is too vague:

"

1. The server specifications(RAM, Hard disk space, Operating system and processor speed) on which the system is running

2. The programming language used to code the System.

3. How the coding of the facilities was implemented i.e the format used. 

Rephrase: We would like to know how you computed your unique identifiers for each health facility. Malawi's current coding system for a given facility is CP0101, with the first 2 letters representing the name of the district, the next two digits representing the first district in the country and the last two digits representing the first facility within that district. The problem with this coding system is that we will have issues where there are 100 facilities in a district. So we are currently looking at exploring intelligent or non intelligent identifier options available that we could possibly use. Perhaps we could go with the same coding system and looking at how we could integrate the luhn algorithm to the code itself.

4. The linkage that is there between this system and other third party systems (interoperability)/ benefits of this Health facility registry.

5. The challenges the might have been faced during the development and how they were resolved.

6. The database used to manage the facilities

"

Thank you once again for coming back to me.

Kind regards,

Kondwani

On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 6:49 AM, Wendy Schultz <sch...@instedd.org> wrote:

Dear Kondwani,

Scott Teesdale, community manager for the Facility Registry community, currently out on paternity leave passed your message along to our internal team for follow up.  Our engineering team is reviewing your questions and will respond via email shortly.

Kind regards,

~wendy 

Wendy L. Schultz-Henry

Chief Operating Officer

Secretary and Treasurer to the Board of Directors

InSTEDD

100 S. Murphy Avenue

Sunnyvale, CA  94086

+1.408.396.9068 mobile

wendy.schultz-henry@ Skype

wschultz @ Twitter

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 9:54 AM, Scott Teesdale <stee...@instedd.org> wrote:

FYI...

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Kondwani Kuthyola
Baobab Health Trust,
P.O. Box 31797,
Lilongwe 3,
Malawi.

+265993741034

[Nicolas di Tada]

Hi Kondwani,

Responses in-line.

On Aug 22, 2017, at 11:28 AM, Kondwani Kuthyola <k.kut...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

We are in the process of developing a Master Health facility Register system for the Ministry of Health in Malawi. We are currently trying to gather requirements for our system and as such, we'd like to do a comparative analysis of different facilities registers currently implemented in various countries (Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Philippines, e.t.c.) globally. Thus, we seek your assistance on how we could gather the information below as it has proven to be a stumbling block in requirements gathering process: 

Wherever possible, we'd like to know:

1. The server specifications(RAM, Hard disk space, Operating system and processor speed) on which the system is running

This depends a lot on the use your are planning, but something like this should perform well in standard scenarios:

16 GB RAM

500 GB HDD

4 x 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon 

Ubuntu 14

2. The programming language used to code the System

Ruby on Rails, details on the full stack can be found here: https://github.com/instedd/resourcemap

3. How the coding of the facilities was implemented i.e the format used.

UIDs in the system are random, but you can add your own manual IDs as well.

4. The linkage that is there between this system and other third party systems / benefits of this Health facility registry

An extensive API provides integration with any REST-able 3rd party app: https://github.com/instedd/resourcemap/wiki/API

5. The challenges the might have been faced during the development and how they were resolved.

This would be a very long answer :-) Can you be more specific?

Your assistance in this regard will be highly appreciated.

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[Jorge Queipo]

Hello,

Just for point 3:

I think for an "intelligent" coding system can have some problems.  For example, including the district code could present problems over time if there is redistricting, for example, and the facility is impacted by that process.

I think that there should be a machine immutable code with a defined name space so that you know that within that name space it is unique and will not change.  I say this because if there is any future sharing of the facility list perhaps with other systems that rely on the facility registry, there could be code collisions, but not if the name space is defined.  For example, the name space could be one of the ISO country codes defined for Malawi (MW, MWI, 454) and then a machine code. (so smart standard-based name space, non smart identifier)

In the example of the smart code that uses the district prefix, if the facility was impacted you would either have to keep the now incorrect convention in order to not break data exchange contract but would be confusing to users that understand the naming convention or you would change it to reflect the new district and thus have data exchange or other system-to-system impacts.

I believe that there should be an immutable code and this could then be complemented by long and short names (which themselves may change).  Would also think that as facilities and attributes of the facility can change over time, it would be of value for the system to be able to track the changes over time (for example the fact that the facility was redistricted and thus had one parent at point in time x and another at point in time y or the facility name changed).  Thus a history or log of facility attributes over time with a current flag or other means to identify the latest record.

Regards,

Jorge

[Derek Ritz]

Hi all.

I'd like to wholeheartedly support Jorge's comment re: IDs. The job of an ID is to be different from all the other IDs. It is a best practice to not include any other information inside the ID itself, but rather to associate these other data with the ID as attributes (that can evolve over time). 

I would even take Jorge's idea of using the country code to define a namespace one step further. There is no downside to using a standards-based GUID as the ID for database purposes; they are easily generated and guaranteed to be unique. Other "shorthand" IDs or codes can be associated with this computer-generated ID and used for human-interaction use cases. The GUID, however, can then be used to support computer-based data sharing workflows and there is no risk of collision... ever. There is a lot to like about that. :-)

I'd also add a note regarding data exchange interfaces. The OpenHIE workflow specification for facility registries references the globally-balloted Care Services Discovery (CSD) profile, which can be found here: http://wiki.ihe.net/index.php/Care_Services_Discovery). There is also a brand new, FHIR-based version of CSD, the mCSD profile... and information about this can be found here: http://wiki.ihe.net/index.php/Mobile_Care_Services_Discovery_(mCSD). Both of these profiles were authored by OpenHIE community members. CSD is fully supported by the both facility registry reference implementation products in the OpenHIE community and these products have both passed certification tests for CSD multiple times. 

I hope this is helpful.

Warmest regards,

Derek.

Derek Ritz
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[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Dear Derek, Jorge, Nicolas, Wendy and Team,

Thank you so much for providing such valuable information. The idea of an immutable code sounds great. We'll definitely explore that and see how best we can come up with a workable solution. I'll be in touch in case I need your expert opinion if you do not mind.

Kind regards,

Kondwani

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[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Hi Nicolas,

Thank you for coming back to me. The information you provided is really useful. As for point 5., what I was trying to imply is, "what are some of the challenges you encountered throughout the project life cycle based on your experience with developing facility registers and how did you overcome such problems?" I hope it's clearer now☺

And one more point, what database did you use for your facility register and why did you go with that database solution?

Kind regards,

Kondwani

Hi Kondwani,

Responses in-line.

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[step...@musph.ac.ug]

Hi,

I am Stephen Ocaya. For Uganda Specifically, we introduced 2 unique codes for the facilities (National Health Provider Identifier) and an Health Service Delivery Taxonomy Code. We have used Python to generate the codes but is implementing the web portal using Laravel PHP Framework. The Python will serve as an API to the PHP codes with Postgresql Database backend.

Main Challenge identified is the process to collect, collate the health facilities from the various districts. by we received a list that covers over 90% of existing facilities and expect the missing ones to be updated using the web system by the stakeholders through a dedicated request to update link.

Regard

[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Dear Stephen,

Thank you for coming back to me with such handy information. This does help in terms of providing a starting point for us. Would you please provide me with the url to your Facility Register if possible?

Kind regards,

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Kondwani Kuthyola

Senior Product Owner

Baobab Health Trust,
P.O. Box 31797,
Lilongwe 3,
Malawi.

Cell: +265993741034

Website: www.baobabhealth.org

[Stephen Ocaya]

Dear Kuthyola,

Unfortunately, the frontend web based system is under development and not yet online. Once it is ready, I will be glad to share the link..

Regards.

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____________________________________________

Stephen Ocaya

HMIS Project Coordinator, 

Monitoring & Evaluation Technical Supports (METS) Programme 

Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH)

Mobile: +256 752 712 007 | +256 774 558 980 | Skype:stephocay

[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks a lot.

Kind regards,

[Stephen Ocaya]

Thanks.

Incase of anything, I will be able to give some highlights of the processes.

Regards

[Bob Jolliffe]

Hi Stephen

Am I right in thinking all facilities should be in the national HMIS
system? I am trying to understand who is the "we" that is obtaining a
list and from who. And why the list is short by 10%.

Cheers
Bob

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[Carl Leitner]

Dear Kondwani Kuthyola,

I am in Malawi this week for the OpenMRS conference. If you would like to meet and discuss the Master Health Facilities Register and the challenges you are having in more details, I would be happy to. I am sure that there are others on this list that may like to join in this discussion as well.

Cheers,
-carl

[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Hi Carl,

Sure thing. We can have a quick chat at break time. There is a Baobab setup at the main entrance, that's where I am at the moment. 

Kind regards, 

>> email to facility-registry+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

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[Kondwani Kuthyola]

Good day all,

Greetings from the warm heart of Africa. This might not be for any of you but if it is then that great, or, if you know anyone or group involved in the discussion then i'd really appreciate if you linked me up to him/her or group. Basically, under the Kuunika project in Malawi, we are embarking on a project on data visualizations (dashboards) to promote data use at the national, district and facility level. As such we would like to use open source tools to develop the dashboards. Lately, we have tried the following:

• Superset
• Tableu Public
• DHIS2
• Google Data Studio

Of the aforementioned software, Superset and Tableu Public sort of meet what we want but not quite close. We are basically looking for a solution like Tablue or Microsoft Power BI that is available as a standalone package on a desktop machine as well as online that would give remote managers/users access to dashboards on the go. We would like for one to be able to customize a particular dashboard on his/her machine and make those changes available online. At the least, the software application should accept data formats in Excel, CSV, PDF (Google Sheets and external applications would be an added advantage).

Looking forward to your reply.

Kind regards,

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Kondwani Kuthyola

Kuunika Products Manager

Baobab Health Trust,
P.O. Box 31797,
Lilongwe 3,
Malawi.

Cell: +265993741034

Website: www.baobabhealth.org

[Scott Teesdale]

Hi Kondwani, 

Great to hear from you. At InSTEDD we typically gravitate towards usings tools like Tableau for data visualizations / dashboards.  Im assuming you want some combo of compelling charts, and maps.   Mostly this is driven by the amount of functionality available in Tableau for a relatively low price, compared to something custom, and that you or your partners can modify it down the road without custom development.

A common challenge we have seen is that there are 2 sort of departing types of use cases that people have.  .  The These being: 

1) A facility finder to help the public or NGOs find individual facilities 

and 

2) An interface that presents analysis, graphs, maps, etc...  

As a reference of some dashboards/facility finders, you might find these interesting...  

• This was developed by the team at UCC.  (http://hfrportal.ehealth.go.tz/) 
  
• This one from Kenya (http://kmhfl.health.go.ke/#/home) 
• This one is from Bangladesh (link) 
  
• This one from the Philippines (link) 
  
• InSTEDD has a customizable prototype portal / facility finder here: https://github.com/instedd/facility-public-portal

On a side note, we are working on some visualizations for a related lab mapping project.  Perhaps we could set up a time to share notes on how we are going about it.  The code we are working on will be open source, but is still at an early state.

- Scott

[Kondwani Kuthyola]

In case the attachment didn't come through, please access it on this link: http://www.designkit.org/resources/1

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Kondwani Kuthyola <k.kut...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Scott,

The information you have provided is very helpful, I will go through the links you have provided and hopefully, i'll find what we are looking for. I hope we don't bump into the same challenges as yours but most likely. We are basically doing dashboards for health facilities at the moment and we are currently gathering requirements using a human centered design approach, see attached.

We can definitely share some notes based on our experiences.

Kind regards,

[Scott Teesdale]

Hi Kondwani, 

Cool - if you would like to, we could hold some time to present your findings.  I think others in the community would find them applicable to their work. 

- Scott