HRIS In Focus The HRIS Strengthening Blog

The Mobile Phone Becoming a Powerful Tool for Development 22 September 2008

The blog talk-share-learn recently posted a roundup of international development projects that are using mobile phones to deliver information and services. This list highlights what a powerful tool the mobile phone is and how many ways it can be used in low-resource settings. Here are some of the applications used for health care:

• An Indian software company, ZMQ Software Systems, is using SMS to alert pregnant women as to what vaccines they need, when to get checkups and other prenatal tips.
• Grameenphone, a cell phone provider in Bangladesh, offers its subscribers interactive telephone consultations with licensed physicians.
• Cell-Life uses mobile phones in South Africa to collect medical information from and schedule appointments for HIV-AIDS patients.

Community health workers in Rwanda.

One of IntraHealth International’s projects, the Last Mile Initiative, is designing an Open Source application for data collection and reporting via cell phones and other mobile devices to create a telecommunications-enabled Community Health Services Information System for the health sector in Rwanda.

The automated system itself is designed to rely on a centralized voice-response unit. Community health workers will make phone calls to the central processor and will be prompted to provide service data on a set of pre-determined indicators. The data collected via the voice response system will then be written to the database. Managers will be able to call into the system to retrieve performance data indicating how well their communities are meeting targets or performing as compared to the district, regional and/or national averages. The automated system also will support the broadcasting of updates from district, regional or national authorities that will keep health workers abreast of recent policy changes and disease outbreaks.

This project is just now getting under way. Visit the IntraHealth Informatics blog for updates over the next few months.

Add a comment

Resources for Open Source Software in Africa 28 July 2008

I wanted to share some resources I’ve recently discovered that promote the use of free and open source software (FOSS) in Africa. Some of these applications are for health, some are for other purposes. But the more open source software becomes familiar to users in the developing world, and the more they use and trust free software, the more likely they will be to adopt an open source information system like iHRIS. We are all working toward the same goals: providing low-cost, sustainable software that helps these countries improve their systems.

• The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa is promoting the use of FOSS and the FOSS model in African development, and the organization supports the integration of FOSS in national policies.
• Open Source Africa provides a migration guide and a connection to the FOSS community in southern Africa.
• The Google Africa Blog is sharing news, stories and thoughts about using Google tools in sub-Saharan Africa.
• OpenMRS is an exciting project to develop an open source electronic medical record system framework specifically for the developing world.

Add a comment

Lessons learned from Mozilla 24 June 2008

In January 2008, The McKinsey Quarterly published an interview with Mitchell Baker, the Chairman of Mozilla: “Succeeding at open-source innovation.” (Access is free, but registration is required.) Baker describes how Mozilla’s model of participation in developing the Open Source Web browser Firefox works. These lessons can certainly be applied to any Open Source development project.

Here are the highlights from the interview:

• Set up frameworks for participation where people can get involved in a very decentralized fashion. Those frameworks should embody the project’s values and goals.
• At the center, have extreme discipline, such as when bringing new code into the core software. But provide lots of areas for participation that don’t require that discipline, such as:
  • building an extension or module
  • localizing the software
  • building new products based on the existing code
• Participants must “own” their contributions. They are motivated to participate when they have a product that makes a real difference in their lives.
• Be prepared to give up control and be completely open about everything you are doing, including bug fixes. Be open and receptive to criticism from the community.

Any Open Source development project can learn a lot from studying large, successful projects like Mozilla. Even the folks at Mozilla are still learning how to manage their community of employees, volunteer developers and users.

One focus for us in the next year of the Capacity Project is on building our knowledge base and learning lessons from the challenges we have faced. We will be sharing those lessons learned through this website.

Add a comment

About This Blog

What is happening with HRIS Strengthening? Get news about our ongoing work in the field, find out when new features and releases of the software are available, learn more about human resource information systems, and join the conversation. Your comments and questions are welcome.