The HRIS Strengthening team is pleased to announce three major software releases in our iHRIS suite of human resource information systems.
We have released Version 1.0 of our workforce planning and modeling software, iHRIS Plan. This proof-of-concept version was developed based on the results of the Workforce Planning Model Workshop held last December. It uses a simplified workforce planning model and will be piloted in Namibia next month.
In addition, we have released upgrades to our human resource management information system, iHRIS Manage, and our training, certification and licensure information system, iHRIS Qualify. Both systems now support customized reporting, which allows users to design and share reports to better analyze and aggregate data entered in the system.
This new release of iHRIS Manage also includes an in-service training management module, which enables human resources departments to schedule employees for in-service trainings, evaluate their performance, and track competencies and continuing education units earned in trainings. The in-service training management module was piloted in Tanzania in July.
Try out any of our systems by accessing the live demos on our HRIS Strengthening website.
Posted by
Shannon Turlington on 8/18/2008 • Tags: HRIS, Information Systems, Releases, Software, Workforce planning, iHRIS
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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.
Posted by
Shannon Turlington on 7/30/2008 • Tags: Africa, FOSS, Free Software Community, Open Source, Software
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As I have promised, we are releasing versions 3.0 of iHRIS Manage and iHRIS Qualify this month. We will start by posting new live demos on the HRIS Strengthening website and stable release versions of the code on our Launchpad hosting site. We’ll follow that up with complete packages that you can download from the HRIS Strengthening website, which will make it easier to install and try out the software.
Writing information systems is hard and sometimes frustrating work. As soon as a new version comes out, our users are clamoring for new features. We feel like we’ll never catch up with the demand. This can be discouraging, until we realize that the systems must be serving a purpose if the users keep wanting more. One thing we have to balance is the need to create software that is general and useful enough for any potential user but can be readily customized for specific settings.
As all software users know, software rarely fits your specific needs out of the box. We knew that there would be different requirements particularly for HR information systems from country to country and even among different facilities. We have striven to make our software easily customizable by the end users, and Version 3.0 builds on this by introducing configurable modules. System administrators can turn off modules they don’t need or set custom settings for modules without requiring programming experience. Programmers can write their own modules and easily integrate them into the system. We plan to follow up these improvements with a customized report-building tool and customizable roles; both should be available by summer.
Another big improvement in Version 3.0 is the ability to export data from reports in a variety of formats, including an attractive printable PDF. This will make data much more useful as it can easily be brought into Excel for more intensive analysis or imported into other systems.
We are looking forward to making versions 3.0 of iHRIS Manage and iHRIS Qualify available for you. But even more, we are looking forward to seeing what users will do with the software. We already have local developers in Uganda and Kenya customizing both systems for their own needs. As more developers contribute customizations and modules, our information systems can only improve for everyone. We welcome all contributions. There’s a lot that still needs to be done.
If you are interested in contributing to this Open Source development project, please contact us.
Posted by
Shannon Turlington on 3/7/2008 • Tags: Development, HRIS, Information Systems, Open Source, Releases, Software, iHRIS
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I’ve had the opportunity to follow the development of OpenID and related technologies from afar for a couple years. Watching the good work of some friends who have developed ClaimID has opened my eyes to what the hurdles are in keeping a unique identity as we move more and more digital.
Here’s the problem: Identity on the web can be nefarious at best. An email address is at its heart temporary and often not the only unique email one person might have. Who hasn’t either contemplated or actually dumped an email address after a particularly bad week of spam? Identities are also defined online by the many services and sites we might have a login for. Yet these are usually different IDs - we can’t be sure of a person’s identity by looking at various accounts.
ClaimID is a great example of a way to combat this by allowing a person to manage their online identity themselves. Further, they are doing so by using the very simple and elegant OpenID protocol. The concept of OpenID being that we have a unique identity which allows us to log in to various services and sites with one single ID by allowing the services to retrieve credentials from a trusted identity provider of the user’s choosing. This last part being key: “of the user’s choosing”.
OpenID is still very much in a phase where, although it is being adopted by some well known services, it is still in roll-out. Although this means we can’t use our OpenIDs in many places yet, the tools for developers to add OpenID support are available and ready for use.
This could be very important for our work here at IntraHealth. This week there have been a couple of different projects plans come up which have made me think about how we could use OpenID. In both cases it comes down to patient records and tracking. The thought of such use in places like Uganda has made me step back and wonder why this type of implementation hasn’t been talked about much in Western medical records and services development. Perhaps it has and I have missed it, nonetheless I do feel like a tool like OpenID could present the beginnings of the type of security which is needed to provide patients and health care givers records online or on handheld devices.
The trick here is creating the trusted identity provider. In the case of the Ugandan projects we could propose that the Ministry of Health become a trusted provider for a Ugandan citizens “Medical ID”. This ID could then be used on the already growing list of servers and applications which have to have unique identifiers for their patients. The same system could also be used to identify health workers as they pass from systems like iHRIS Qualify to a training center’s application - therefore more easily (and automatically) updating either system’s records on what type of training the health worker has completed. The beauty of the OpenID process is that, if implemented correctly, it allows the patient or worker to be in charge of their own identity and who they trust with the creation and storage of that identity. As long as we keep them first in any design, they win.
Posted by
David Mason on 1/14/2008 • Tags: Design, Development, Software, Technology, Tools
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We are not workforce planning experts, yet it is one of our goals for the Capacity Project to develop user-friendly health workforce planning software specifically for low-resource countries. Last week, we brought together a group of workforce planning experts from all over the world, representing countries like Finland and Uganda and organizations like the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the Asia-Pacific Action Alliance on Human Resources for Health. Our goal was to select a workforce planning model we could base our software on, specify features for the software and form a working group to advise on the software development.
Workforce planning expert Peter Hornby explains the complexities of workforce planning to workshop participants.
The most exciting aspect of the workshop for me was the conversation, which was constant, lively and collaborative. Everyone agreed that software was sorely needed. The greatest need for the software is to present a complex task in a simpler way so that planners and policy makers can easly analyze data about their health workforce and plan for the future.
The conversation revolved around the many complexities of workforce planning, such as ensuring that plans are affordable and balancing the needs of different geographical areas in a country, as well as the private and public sectors. Many issues we hadn’t even considered were raised by our group of experts. For example, I hadn’t realized that the data requirements for short-term and long-term projections are very different, yet both are crucial for effective planning. It was also important to consider how our software will help planners present their recommendations to decision makers in government, other stakeholders and even the media.
Finally, I learned that there is an art to workforce planinng, as well as a science. The planner must stand back and take a look at the set of assumptions made about the future of the workforce, and then fine-tune those assumptions to adjust for the context of that country. How can we support this artistic process in software? At this point, I’m not sure.
We walked away with a robust set of suggestions for how to start our first iteration of development, which is scheduled for piloting in Namibia only six months from now. And I learned more about the nuances and complexities of workforce planning than I ever imagined. Now the real fun begins as we start developing the software. But with this group of experts ready to provide suggestions, test prototypes and help write the documentation, I feel confident that we can produce an extremely useful tool. I, for one, am looking forward to the conversation continuing.
Workforce planning experts gathered together for a two-day workshop at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., to define specifications for workforce planning software.
Does workforce planning excite you? We are looking for contributors to help us develop our Open Source workforce planning software. We need help with documentation, testing and programming. If you’re interested, leave a comment or contact us.
Posted by
Shannon Turlington on 12/19/2007 • Tags: ICT4d, Software, Workforce planning, Workshops
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“Indeed, few countries in sub-Saharan Africa even know precisely how many health workers they have and where those workers are distributed. More than 40 percent of these countries lack data on how many community health workers operate within their borders, for instance. NGOs can help fill such information gaps. They should start by teaming up with the Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA) and other multilateral groups to help answer, for example, basic questions about the distribution of human resources at the district level and the availability of infrastructure and medical supplies in rural areas. Current efforts to elicit this information should be expanded.” - McKinsey Report: “Addressing Africa’s Health Workforce Crisis”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, December 11 and 12, the Capacity Project’s HRIS Strengthening team is presenting a PEPFAR-funded workshop to launch a comprehensive human resource information system inventory project and begin building a community of practice. Fifty HRH informatics leaders from USAID, the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank and a wide variety of nongovernmental organizations, universities and regional representatives are gathering to seek better alignment, understanding and coordination of efforts to overcome the barriers to accurate and timely health worker information in countries around the world.
On Thursday and Friday, thirty of these leaders, representing every major contributor, past and present, in the field of international health workforce planning, are coming together to design the first user-friendly health workforce planning software, iHRIS Plan. Previous planning models over the last thirty years have only been available in cumbersome and notoriously difficult spreadsheets, only understood by expensive and difficult-to-hire consultants. IntraHealth’s team of Open Source software developers will be working with this group of experts to build truly usable, free and open software allowing countries to:
- analyze their health workforce
- project the workforce’s growth or decline into the future
- anticipate future workforce needs
- and model interventions to close the gap between the two.
The input of these experts in HRIS and workforce planning should be invaluable in producing two worthwhile products: a database of HRIS strengthening activities going on in countries around the world, and easy-to-use modeling and planning software that we can distribute free to workforce planners in developing countries.
Posted by
Dykki Settle on 12/11/2007 • Tags: Events, HRH, HRIS, ICT4d, News, Software, Workforce planning, Workshops
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