Health information system strengthening and malaria elimination in Papua New Guinea

• Published in: Malaria Journal
• Main Authors: Alexander Rosewell, Leo Makita, David Muscatello, Lucy Ninmongo John, Sibauk Bieb, Ross Hutton, Sundar Ramamurthy, Phil Shearman
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2017
• Subjects: Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Infectious and parasitic diseases; RC109-216; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-017-1910-0; https://doaj.org/article/502d6d754ab04c8c990b1b1776424005

Abstract Background The objective of the study was to describe an m-health initiative to strengthen malaria surveillance in a 184-health facility, multi-province, project aimed at strengthening the National Health Information System (NHIS) in a country with fragmented malaria surveillance, striving towards enhanced control, pre-elimination. Methods A remote-loading mobile application and secure online platform for health professionals was created to interface with the new system (eNHIS). A case-based malaria testing register was developed and integrated geo-coded households, villages and health facilities. A malaria programme management dashboard was created, with village-level malaria mapping tools, and statistical algorithms to identify malaria outbreaks. Results Since its inception in 2015, 160,750 malaria testing records, including village of residence, have been reported to the eNHIS. These case-based, geo-coded malaria data are 100% complete, with a median data entry delay of 9 days from the date of testing. The system maps malaria to the village level in near real-time as well as the availability of treatment and diagnostics to health facility level. Data aggregation, analysis, outbreak detection, and reporting are automated. Conclusions The study demonstrates that using mobile technologies and GIS in the capture and reporting of NHIS data in Papua New Guinea provides timely, high quality, geo-coded, case-based malaria data required for malaria elimination. The health systems strengthening approach of integrating malaria information management into the eNHIS optimizes sustainability and provides enormous flexibility to cater for future malaria programme needs.