dhis2-users team mailing list archive

[Samuel Cheburet <samuelcheburet@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks everyone for sharing. I believe DHIS will provide the flat form so
as to explore possibilities and appropriateness of the technology.

DHIS team require to open water on SMS configuration to give room for more
exploration and input to improvement.

Regards



On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:45 PM, Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Sent from my mobile
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "ICTWorks" <wayan@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Feb 22, 2012 5:04 PM
> Subject: A Ugandan mHealth Moratorium Is a Good Thing and 2 more
> To: <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> **
>    A Ugandan mHealth Moratorium Is a Good Thing and 2 more<http://www.ictworks.org>
>  <http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Ictworks>
> ------------------------------
>
> A Ugandan mHealth Moratorium Is a Good Thing<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ictworks/~3/--bTgwxNHWY/ugandan-mhealth-moratorium-good-thing?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
>
> Posted: 22 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST
>
> [image: mhealth-projects-uganda.jpg]<http://www.flickr.com/photos/texttochange/5178727492/>
>
> I am David McCann <http://ug.linkedin.com/pub/david-mccann/37/81a/675>and when I first arrived in Uganda, I used to describe it as "the perfect
> storm" for aid in general, and M4D in particular. The country overall has
> the necessary cellular coverage for a successful M4D project.
>
> Kampala is comfortable, with mild weather, good infrastructure (Umeme
> Electricity Co. notwithstanding), and more than its share of
> international-style restaurants for all those expatriate aid workers. And
> in contrast, the impoverished Northern regions of the country have the
> necessary need for immediate and long-term intervention from development
> organizations, from the small NGO to Big Aid.
>
> *The government, at first blush, seems to enjoy the arrangement*
>
> Discussions of corruption within any large organization or government
> could fill volumes, but to put it succinctly, big money flows through
> Uganda, funds many of its public programs, and is certainly strained
> through the appropriate parliamentarians (and yes, a few high-paid NGO
> consultants) before arriving where it's needed.
>
> The result is almost a gold-rush frenzy to get one's own brand of smart
> phone and wheel-reinventing Android app out to a handful of Village Health
> Team workers and change the world. In theory, this sounds like a win for
> the Ugandan people...
>
> *In practice, there are other details to consider*
>
> You've managed to track drug stock-outs in a sub-county in Moroto using
> solar chargers and 50 Samsung Galaxies. That's great, can we share data
> with a similar project I did using BlackBerries in Gulu? Probably not.
> You've rolled your own drug-stock-tracking application. And yet when
> members of Big Aid met with the Ministry of Health, to account for the
> overlapping features of their mHealth applications and whether API
> integration is possible, one actually responded along the lines of "well,
> it's backed by a relational database, so in theory, yes."
>
> While true, this misses the intent of the question by a wide margin. It's
> worse in the education sector, where the Ministry of Education and Sports
> has unfortunately contracted a private US company to write a proprietary,
> never-completed application for tracking district-level attendance. A year
> ago I was told it did have an API, "using SOAP." A year later the company
> has yet to elaborate on that single sentence worth of documentation.
> <https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150560220444576&set=a.10150332933969576.349004.183382104575>
> Uganda MoH mHealth Stop Work Order
>
> *Ministry of Health is pushing coordination*
>
> In contrast, the Resource Center at the Ministry of Health has in their
> employ a talented young IT professional, whose task has been to migrate
> literally dozens of historical databases (in MS-Access, shudder) over to
> their running instance of DHIS2. When I have the pleasure of speaking with
> him, he gets excited about software using Django, FOSS in general, and API
> layers for sharing data. He's part of an elite few Ugandan IT professionals
> who are changing their country for the better.
>
> DHIS2 is fulfilling the medical recording needs of not only Uganda, but
> many other countries in the region including neighboring Rwanda. It is
> free, open source, and continues to have features added to it by an active
> community. Its adoption by (and related referendum from) the Ministry of
> Health in Uganda signals perhaps not a changing of the guard, but at least
> the entrance of a few people in key positions who pay attention.
>
> These champions are forcing the Big Aid organizations to do M4D in a more
> coherent way<https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150560220444576&set=a.10150332933969576.349004.183382104575>.
> They've cut the tracking of health-based indicators that serve only as
> metrics of aid success, and they get excited (and sometimes even angry)
> when they see the messages people send in to an anonymous hotline about
> drug stock-outs or health provider absenteeism. (For those in Uganda, the
> hotline is a free SMS short code, 8200, and you can report on any problems
> in your local health facility).
>
> *If you want to do M4D in Uganda, you have to be willing to collaborate.*
>
> If you still think the best way to succeed is by handing out an iPad to
> every village health worker in the parish you're working in, great. Just
> make sure first that no one else is handing out Androids there too. And
> when your pilot crashes and burns because it can't scale country-wide, your
> data should at least be able to feed into a system that tracks the entire
> small-scale NGO graveyard of projects, because the sum total of the data
> actually is useful, even if the project itself ultimately wasn't. If you're
> Big Aid, it means you're going to have to start re-thinking the budget of
> that $hundreds-of-thousands grant, because it probably shouldn't have your
> own branded software platform as a line item.
>
> Obviously, I see this as a good thing. It's a powerful indication that at
> least at the Ministry of Health, Uganda is ready to take ownership for its
> development. And really, isn't that sort of the whole point?
>
>
>  .
>
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> Get an ICT4D Job with Inveneo, Catholic Relief Services, or infoDev<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ictworks/~3/9gvRrtPREQE/get-ict4d-job-inveneo-catholic-relief-services-or-infodev?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
>
> Posted: 21 Feb 2012 05:31 AM PST
> [image: inveneo.jpg]
>
> *Senior Project Manager:* Inveneo <http://www.inveneo.org>, the parent
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> [image: READ_Global_CMYK.jpg]
>
> *Asia Managing Director:* READ Global <http://www.readglobal.org/>believes empowering rural communities is critical to alleviating rural
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> [image: crs.jpg]
>
> *Manager–ICT4D Projects:* Catholic Relief Services seeks someone to
> manage its portfolio of ICT4D projects. This broad management position
> includes integrating ICT4D initiatives into existing projects, working to
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> stakeholders to provide a comprehensive ICT4D strategies and quality
> solutions. The position is based in Baltimore (with 25% travel) and the
> deadline for application is March 12. More information is available here<https://www2.apply2jobs.com/CRS/ProfExt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=599&CurrentPage=1>
> .
> [image: infodev_1.jpg]
>
> *Senior Program Coordinator:* The World Bank's infoDev<http://www.infodev.org/en/index.html>program needs a Senior Program Coordinator for its EPIC (Entrepreneurship
> Program for Innovation in the Caribbean) Program. EPIC helps growth
> oriented Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in the Caribbean region use
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> [image: war_child.jpg]
>
> *Senior ICT and Media Advisor:* War Child International<http://www.warchild.org/>is a network of independent humanitarian organizations that work together
> to help children and youth affected by armed conflict. War Child Holland is
> seeking a Senior ICT and Media Advisor to support and advise staff to
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> is March 4. More information is available here<http://www.warchildholland.org/nieuws/3170/senior-ict-media-advisor.html>.
>
>
>
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-- 
Samuel Cheburet
Ministry Of Health
P.O. Box 20781
Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile- 0721624338

*"When you cease to dream you cease to live, Neither you nor the world
knows what you can do until you have tried".*

*"Chance favours the prepared mind" -Louis Pasteur
*
**