Strengthening Health Information Systems in Bangladesh

Author(s): MEASURE Evaluation

Year: 2019

Abstract:

MEASURE Evaluation, funded by the United States Agency for International Development, has been working in Bangladesh to support the Program Management and Monitoring Unit at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOH) to achieve improved strategic planning, assessment, and monitoring and evaluation of health systems and outcomes. A gap that had been identified and strategically addressed in Bangladesh was the lack of systematic population data, especially for rural areas. In order to produce higher-quality data and to support better health sector planning, MEASURE Evaluation has been working with the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh to help the country’s Directorate General of Health Services and the Directorate General of Family Planning to strengthen the routine health information system of the MOH. Much of this work strengthens elements of the health information system (HIS) identified in MEASURE Evaluation’s Health Information System Strengthening Model.

This brief features a graphic that depicts MEASURE Evaluation’s activities in the model’s “enabling environment” and “information generation” areas and support of the electronic health management information system. By displaying interventions across the model, we see their strategic interaction, and how this combination of interventions strengthens data quality and data use at all levels of the health system. A table lists additional MEASURE Evaluation activities that support HIS strengthening in Bangladesh, by the year in which they began. Because of these interventions, we expect data quality to improve and the use of HIS data to generate health indicators, statistics, and trends for data-informed decision making to increase.