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Re: From 'District' to 'Decentralized' and 'Software' to 'System'

 

There is indeed a long history, as Jason points out, and the "district"
focus took its inspiration from the WHO Alma Ata Declaration from 1978 and
its focus on Primary Health Care and "Health For All"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_Ata_Declaration

Furthermore, the very first versions of DHIS came out of close
collaboration with three pilot districts in Cape Town:
http://www.mn.uio.no/ifi/english/research/networks/hisp/hisp-history.html
http://folk.uio.no/patrickr/refdoc/BraaHedberg02.pdf
http://www.mn.uio.no/ifi/english/research/networks/hisp/integrated-health-information-architecture.html

However, by this stage, it seems to me that the acronym DHIS has also
acquired quite an identity of its own, a bit like e.g. IBM, a name much
like others, which could be used without necessarily going into "what it
stands for".

Knut



On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx
> wrote:

> Hi Proper,
>
> Remember, with open source software, you are free to call it what you
> want! I know of a private company who has now forked DHIS2 and are calling
> it something entirely different, for their own reasons. In other countries,
> DHIS2 has been  branded differently, according to their own acronyms.
>
> I would however, not expect a change on this, given the long history. :)
>
> My two cents,
> Jason
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Prosper BT <ptb3000@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Dear team,
>>
>> Quite often end users especially below and above the district level have
>> asked Why 'District' and we have struggled to explain this by first telling
>> history. In passing someone suggested renaming District to Decentralized
>> and Software to System.
>>
>> What it if in respect of maintaining the acronym it becomes
>> "Decentralized Health Information System - DHIS?
>>
>> 'Don't kill the messenger'
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> --
>> Prosper Behumbiize, MPH
>> Phone:        +256 414 320076
>> Cell:            +256 752 751776
>>                    +256 702 762707
>>
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>>
>
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>


-- 
Knut Staring
Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo
+4791880522
http://dhis2.org

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