Talking about Health: focus group Tanzania

Today we concluded a two-day focus group. It brought together 18 participants from the Health sector in Tanzania. Most of them were team members of projects that experiment with putting ICT to proper use in Health. This included initiatives for e-learning, creating a web portal for knowledge sharing, but most are involved in health information systems. The other participants were end users from the health centres and hospitals that the projects serve. A consultant responsible for Monitoring and Evaluation in Tanzania summed up the findings of a survey among the end users of the ICT services on their quality and impact.

It was a cheerful session. All participants worked quite hard, but the atmosphere was nice. The workshop started on Monday with some 'brown paper sessions' on project goals, target groups and the project environment, looking at which factors in the environment of the project push it forward and which factors inhibit the project from reaching its goals. Many of the projects discovered that they had many challenges in common, immediately sparking discussions among them.

Following the brown paper sessions, the participants split into smaller groups to look more closely at the outcomes of the surveys, in discussions on the possibilities and necessities to lower patient fees, the impact of the project on different groups of users and the difficulties and advantages of linking the information from the health information systems to a reporting system that the hospitals use to report to the government.

Having all these different "minds" together helped to make a good analysis; the end users giving the on-the-ground perspective, making it possible for the projects team members to put their finger on the problems and their causes and to formulate practical action points. Next to these practical outcomes, the participants were patient and understanding, helping those who took longer and genuinely building a group feeling.