Saturday, April 19, 2025
4/19/2025
Strengthening the Government of Tanzania's Capacity to Develop, Implement and Use Digital Health for PEPFAR - The PATH consortium will support public health institutions (PHIs) and the government of Tanzania (GoT) to achieve and sustain HIV/TB epidemic control through data access, management, and use capabilities. Our approach is twofold: (1) Feasible and effective standards-based approach to integration with and development on established GoT digital health systems. We will provide technical assistance and mentorship to GoT and PHIs to develop and maintain individual HIS to collect and exchange quality data for patient-centered clinical and programmatic decision-making. We will leverage existing investments in individual-level HIS. We will provide technical support to GoT to expand the functionality of electronic medical records in AfyaCare and GoT-HoMIS to incorporate HIV/TB business rules and functionalities. This will ensure the availability of accurate and high-quality HIV/TB data from the point of service, including data to support disease surveillance. To further increase harmonization of HIS, we will use the Tanzania Health Enterprise Architecture (TZHEA) blueprint to identify and document data exchange requirements and needs, including identifying source and destination systems, data entities and standards for exchange, and frequency of data exchange. We will leverage the implementation of interoperability use cases to integrate these systems so that they can communicate through the Tanzania HIM. (2) Expansion of current HIS into an interoperable digital health system using appropriate technologies and resources. First, we will identify standards that will be needed to implement and ensure the systems incorporated contain all the required data exchange standards. Through sensitization and dissemination workshops, connect-a-thons, and hack-a-thons, we will support GoT efforts to build internal technical capacity in data standards and promote their use. This will create a common understanding of data standards as stipulated in the TZHEA blueprint; identify technical persons to be trained and certified; and provide an appropriate orientation of enterprise architecture. In addition, we will work with the Center for Digital Health Excellence to revise standard operating procedures for integrating systems (e.g., AfyaCare, GoT-HoMIS, and CTC) into the HIM. Second, we will provide expert scientific advice, consultation, and leadership to the review, adoption, and implementation of internationally consistent data and information standards to facilitate data exchange and aggregation. PATH will leverage our experience as a member of OpenHIE, a member of the PEPFAR-funded global informatics collaborative implementing the Technical Assistance Platform, and in developing Tanzanian health registries and incorporating international data standards to support GoT to promote and expand existing systems and establish effective automated data exchange and aggregation. The consortium will support GoT in identifying and adopting open international standards for data exchange. Data reporting requirements will be defined in terms of the open data exchange standards and data coding and national data standards. Utilization of these standards enables secondary data use cases to reduce data entry burdens and improve data quality. Specific support to interoperable digital health tools will be structured in terms of interoperability maturity models. The consortium will also engage with and support existing GoT governance bodies in interoperability efforts. Successful completion of the above will result in GoT defining, developing, maintaining, using, and evaluating efficient, high-quality, secure, sustainable, and interoperable HIS. Furthermore, HIS will assist GoT in program planning; evidence-based decision-making; program activities such as prevention, detection, and treatment of HIV; population-based epidemic monitoring; and once epidemic control is achieved, the transition from emergency response to routine national health programming.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).