News & Updates

West Africa’s Ebola outbreak reminds us that frontline health workers are a vital component of every health system, and structures must be put in place to continuously support them and their important work. The outbreak highlighted a critical need to establish a more robust communications and data collection system between health workers and their supervisors as they address priority health needs. Equipping health workers with the right kind of...

IntraHealth International and UNICEF launched the mHero platform in late 2014 in the midst of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Originally designed to help Ministries of Health connect with frontline health workers via SMS messages to collect and share information helpful for a rapid response to Ebola, mHero is now a tool embraced by Ministries of Health to support two-way communication for a wide-range of health services. mHero is different...

Ally Shaban doesn’t remember the exact moment he became extremely proud of his work. He just knows that his job developing applications is slowly building new opportunities for his country, Tanzania. “I help implement new technologies in Africa so one day I can proudly say to my children, ‘We are the ones who built these tools that made things run smoothly’,” he says. “I can be very proud of that.” The UN would argue Ally deserves to be proud...

The Global iHRIS Community will begin using the cloud-based collaboration tool Slack to augment its community communications. You can access Slack on your phone, from a web-browser as well as directly on your computer. The Global iHRIS Google Group will remain the principal communication tool allowing community members to share news, pose questions and receive feedback. “Sometimes email is too cumbersome when there needs to be a lot of back and...

Four new countries have recently adopted iHRIS and four more are in the planning stage to use the open-source health information system. Presently, 23 countries utilize iHRIS to track and manage more than one million health workers. That is up from 18 countries in 2013. The countries entering the planning stages to adopt iHRIS include: Bhutan Dominican Republic Ethiopia The Gambia The possibility that 27 countries could utilize iHRIS illustrates...

On Saturday, November 7, the World Health Organization declared Sierra Leone Ebola-free . Hundreds flooded the streets of Freetown to celebrate and pay tribute to those whose lives were lost during the outbreak. I read about the celebrations online with joy and happiness—they’d finally made it. I could almost hear the drums playing from North Carolina. Over the past year during my travels to Freetown, I’ve observed the struggles and hardships...

IntraHealth International announces a major release of the iHRIS health workforce information software. Version 4.2 introduces changes to the core software that improve data presentation and usability. iHRIS (pronounced “iris”) is a suite of free open source software specifically designed to supply low-resource countries with information to track, manage, deploy, and budget for their health workers. The iHRIS software has had 12 minor releases...

This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post : For most of us, only a handful of moments will etch themselves forever into our memories. For me, one came when I learned that Ebola had broken out in West Africa.It was December 2013 and I was watching the news. The ticker tape across the bottom of the screen confirmed an outbreak in Guinea. The news anchor didn't even mention it. Then I watched from afar as the epidemic...

Poring over data from his native Democratic Republic of Congo this summer, Jean Lambert Chalachala uncovered some interesting—and troubling—aspects of the DRC’s health workforce. For one thing, he says, a third of the nurses for whom there are data in the DRC are over 60 years old. “Do you understand what this means?” he asks. “The official retirement age in the DRC is 60—they should be retired. And we will need new nurses to replace them.”...

Today, health sectors around the world—including throughout Africa, South and Central America, and Asia—are swimming in data.New health information systems are helping officials track not only disease outbreaks and health care needs, but their countries’ health workforces as well. Countries can now find out how many health workers they have, whether those workers are up-to-date on their licenses and training, and whether they’re stationed in the...