2017 ICT4D Conference

Public health decisions must be based on hard data and evidence. For the north Indian state of Haryana, which paradoxically lags on child and maternal health indicators despite being among the fastest-growing states in the country, it is imperative that data be the backbone of health programming. In a strategic effort to address data access and use barriers, the National Health Mission Haryana and the USAID-supported Health Finance and Governance project have closely collaborated to develop and roll out the innovative Haryana Health Geographic Information System (HHGIS) application, which, importantly, aligns with the endeavor to achieve Sustiabnle Development Goal target 3.d to increase country capacity to manage health risks. In my presentation, I will elucidate how the interoperable HHGIS application has equipped public health managers and decision makers in the state with tools to access a huge array of raw health data and turn it into meaningful information.

Through my presentation, I will demonstrate interoperability as a powerful and transformative technology innovation, given the bearing it has on how data is accessed, analyzed, and used. Interoperability is the defining feature of the open-source HHGIS application, which allows its users to easily access and use large volumes of health data that earlier lay largely unused in different health information silos. Using SOAP web service, HHGIS is pulling a huge quantum of data in real time from the different health system applications linked with it and bringing it onto an interactive visually-rich interface; HHGIS is already linked with 12 applications, with the possibility for adding ‘n’ number of applications. Haryana’s state and district health staff and M&E personnel have been trained on HHGIS, receiving it with much enthusiasm for making a huge quantity of raw and diverse data easily accessible in a span of seconds. The words of a Haryana district M&E Officer summarize the sentiment well: “The task of data comparison that earlier took me several hours or even days will now be completed in a few clicks."