IICD supported project: ICT Policy and Strategy for the Health Sector

Countries: Uganda [UG]
Sectors: health

Summary

The National Telemedicine / Telehealth Steering Committee of the Ministry of Health develops an implementation strategy for the ICT Health Sector Policy to facilitate efficient information and communication services running across the entire sector. Priority areas are improved access to health services, improved healthcare delivery through the Health Monitoring and Information System (HMIS), District health management, Telemedicine, and Continuing Medical Education (CME). The strategy will function as a guide for future investment in ICT in relation to its particular benefits in the sector, and facilitate controlled and efficient usage of resources.

Update

Updated: 2007-11-12

After multi-stakeholder, participatory Workshop with the Ministry of Health in 2005, a small Task Force of five members was put in place with two members from outside the Ministry (the co-chair is the project coordinator of one of our project partners UCMB). Quite some progress was made in 2005 but this process halted in 2006 for reasons which are very complex. The Health Development Work Group invited IICD to establish a high-level conceptual seminar on the use of ICT in the Health sector. IICD took up a sector scan (ICT in Health) and a participatory process (with key stakeholders) to - amongst others - focuses more on up-country awareness about the possibilities of an ICT for Health policy. These activities provided good input for policy and strategy.

In 2006 the focus shifted from developing a policy and an implementation document to raising awareness and getting input and validation for the current implementation plan from all stakeholders. A tour was organised to 12 locations all over Uganda to consult stakeholders and to create awareness on possible roles of ICTs in Health. These seminars provided very valuable input to the implementation strategy. After all policy making is a process! For example, the discussions during the Jinja seminar resulted in the strategic choice of formalizing the use of cell phones by heath workers to strengthen the referral system.

Two other remarkable milestones in this process are:

• A workshop was implemented by TaskForce for key decision makers of the MoH. This lead to a pilot with one referral hospital of the IICD supported CME project. It can also be considered as a similar approach as used within the UCE-Naads approach for leveraging.
• A short seminar/meeting was implemented by TaskForce with support of IICD for the Donor Working Group Health on request of Sida (leader of this DWG-Health). This was followed up by a seminar on ICT for Health in August 2006. The main donors (Sida, DFID, EU, USAID) all attended the meeting and discussed increasing the role of ICT within the Health sector.

Introduction

Health plays a large role in poverty eradication. The 1998 Ugandan Participatory Poverty Assessment Programme (UPPAP) identified ill health as the most frequent cause and reason for poverty. This shows that if poverty is to be eradicated then the health sector has a critical role to play. The Government of Uganda has embraced the use of ICT for poverty eradication and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Therefore, the Ministry of Health developed - in line with amongst others the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) and the National ICT policy – a Health Sector ICT Policy.

IICD supports the development of an implementation programme for the Health Sector ICT Policy to assure effective use of ICT, to avoid duplication, to harmonize current initiatives and to better control recurrent costs. An ICT implementation strategy - developed and validated through a multi-stakeholder approach - helps to make the most effective use of ICT.

Objectives

The overall objective of this project is to create a feasible, implement able, validated implementation programme in support of the ICT Health Sector Policy. The National Telemedicine/Telehealth Steering Committee (NSTC) aims to do so by:

• Developing capacities within the MoH for ICT policy formulation, implementation, ICT management and monitoring;
• Developing a set of fundamental ICT investment guidelines aimed at supporting the introduction, expansion and development of ICT applications within the sector that are based on harmonised ICT platforms, thus avoiding sub-optimal investment in dissimilar systems;
• Monitoring implementation of the ICT investment guidelines;
• Enhancing awareness and support training for all health workers using a “Train the Trainer” (TTT) approach using the approach of the “Resource Management Units”/ “End-User Support Centres” as described in the Health sector ICT policy;
• To formulate ICT programmes identified in the Health Sector ICT Policy; and,
• To fine-tune the Health Sector ICT Policy.

Management and organisation

Building a consistent ICT implementation strategy in the Health sector requires a multi-stakeholder and participatory approach. It helps to identify areas where the performance can be boosted. Harmonization of current health initiatives using ICT, standards for data formats, hard and software, guidelines for investments are crucial to reduce investments and recurrent costs. The multi stakeholder and participatory approach make this possible.

Lessons learned

Policy making within such a big Ministry is a difficult process. Also getting a policy and strategy through Parliament is very slow process.

Budget

100.000 euro.

Project Owner : The programme owner, who is also the promoter of the Health Sector ICT Policy, strategy and implementation process, is the National Telemedicine/Telehealth Steering Committee (NSTC) of the Ministry of Health (MoH).

Project Contact : IICD