Guest post by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
In September 2015, the USAID Global Development Lab released an call for Expressions of Interest to solicit innovative ideas to strengthen interoperability and development of health information systems in West Africa, and to engage in a co-creation process with the strongest applicants.
We received over 100 Expressions of Interest in response to our call and held the HIS Interoperability Co-Creation Workshop last week. The convening successfully brought together 80+ participants from 40+ organizations.
Participants on Day 1
Over the course of the three days, software developers, implementing partners, donors, and other partners grappled with the problem of interoperability of HIS in West Africa in collaborative groups (and virtually on Slack, concurrently!) and identified 11 different initial concepts and opportunities. The concepts ranged in theme from terminology services and standards-driven dictionaries to machine learning for disparate data sets to improved donor coordination.
Breakout group, “Data-Added Value Exchange”
Slack discussion, happening live during the workshop
You can read more about the workshop proceedings and outcomes in this brief workshop summary.
