Digital Health Activity: Ethiopia

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Ethiopia faces severe health concerns related to acute malnutrition, access to clean water, maternal mortality, malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. These health issues are amplified by the fact that more than half of the population in Ethiopia lives more than 10 km from the nearest health facility.

The government of Ethiopia has invested in a robust Health Extension Worker (HEW) project in order to address the challenges faced by the population in accessing health services at the community level. Ethiopia’s HEW program is the largest cadre of CHWs in Sub-Saharan Africa, however it faces challenges shared by many government frontline worker programs: effectively training HEWs, gaps in health data, and discrepancies in patient registers at the community level.

Ethiopia’s Information Revolution, developed in 2016, aims to advance the methods and practices of collecting, analyzing, presenting, and using information for decision-making at all levels of the health system, including the challenges experienced within the HEW program.

About the Digital Health Activity

The Digital Health Activity (DHA) is a five-year project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that supports the Government of Ethiopia to achieve the country’s Information Revolution Roadmap, one of four Transformational Agendas of the national Health Sector Transformation Plan. DHA will help build a sustainable, resilient, and interoperable health information system that ensures the entire health sector has the data, analytics, and skills necessary to improve the health and well-being of all Ethiopians.

JSI leads the Digital Health Activity with a consortium of partners who support the three DHA objectives: digitization of various digital tools, data use to empower data-driven decision making, and governance and capacity building to create a sustainable digital health ecosystem. Dimagi is proud to be a key partner in achieving these pillars.

Dimagi’s role on DHA

Dimagi’s role on DHA is to support the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) team with the development and maintenance of the electronic community health information system (eCHIS). The eCHIS system includes a suite of CommCare applications for HEWs, their supervisors, and health facility level users that acts as an integrated primary health care service delivery and reporting tool for the health extension program.

Dimagi’s work on the DHA contract includes eCHIS application and reporting design and performance optimization, as well as server performance monitoring and improvements. All of Dimagi’s support on DHA is executed with the larger goal to build the capacity of the local eCHIS team.

“CommCare has enabled Ethiopia to achieve meaningful digital implementation with our eCHIS. The platform supports 17,000+ health extension workers with job aids, longitudinal tracking, and referral systems while maintaining government ownership and enabling paperless service delivery.”

Gemechis Melkamu, Digital Health Lead Executive Officer, Ethiopia Ministry of Health

Learn more

For more information on the DHA or eCHIS project, refer to the following resources:

• USAID Highlights CommCare Nutrition Projects From Around the World (blog post from Dimagi)
• Good Leadership for Successful Health Information Systems in Ethiopia
• Developing Resilient Digital Health Systems: Lessons from Ethiopia’s post-conflict situation