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Project History
When did the project start?
In Kurdistan, the heath data were not systematically collected, or collected mostly on paper rather than collected electronically, which made it difficult to have reliable and regular information of the health situation of population. Therefore, there was a need for rebuilding an efficient health system in Kurdistan capable to meet population’s health needs.
In Jun 2015 the KRG-HIS project started by an international initiative funded by the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Italian Cooperation Agency in coordination with University of Rome Tor Vergata.
Project Development Phases
Pilot phase: In this phase which started in June 2015, the first step was identifying the PH and PHC that could be included in the surveillance system according to specific criteria. In the second step, we chose the software platform (dhis2) that have been tested and adapted to the local environment, and the coding system (ICD-10). In the third step, a training session was provided to the healthcare professional on the use of health information and epidemiological surveillance systems.
Then by the end of 2016, about 29 health facilities (16 PHC and 13PH) were networked, running an operational system which began routinely to collect the diagnoses of all referred patients.
Implementation Phase: started in 2018, by including new centers in addition to the centers that have been already activated during the pilot phase. The health and administrative personnel of all these centers have already been trained in data collection, analysis, and disease classification. Training of trainers (TOT) model also was adopted, to provide new local staff that can ensure the project’s continuity and sustainability. In the academic year (2018-2019), the University of Rome Tor Vergata, as a part of the project, offered six paid Ph.D. positions related to the project itself.
By September 2019, 59 centers (44 PHC and 15 PH) have been identified by local health authorities to be included in the Health Information System.
The present
Today dozens of Public Health Centers and Hospitals distributed on the four governorates are already entering health data in the Health Monitoring System and Hundreds of thousands disease events have been collected from the public hospitals and public health centers.
Future direction
Our vision for the future is to increase over the years the number of centers and hospitals involved in the system and extending the project to the whole country.