Abstract

In the discussions about adequate health management information systems for district health systems, the facilitation of personal computers is considered to be a cost-effective support for the evaluation of routine service data. However, a generic software application product which is adaptable to the needs of a district is not available, although its construction is considered to be feasible. Instead, in most countries there exists at least one national solution. These tend to have severe limitations, resulting in very short live cycles of the software and the information processes which rely on it.

• Limited functionality: many solutions do not include functions for data analysis and presentation.
• Limited adaptability: many solutions are not adequately adaptable to the ever changing information needs and reporting structures of a health management information system.
• Limited reliability: many solutions were developed by expatriate consultants in a relatively short time without exhaustive testing. The consultant is difficult to find, when a programming error appears after a longer time of use.
• Limited transparency: many solutions were not developed with an eye on user needs, such as data entry clerks. This results in unreliable data entry and processing.