Information Systems for Health (IS4H)
Information Systems for Health is a mechanism for managing interoperable systems with open data that comes from different sources and that is ethically used, through effective ICT tools, to generate strategic information for the benefit of public health.
Maturity Model
The IS4H-MM is a reference framework guiding Information Systems for Health to keep walking along the path of change marked by the information and knowledge revolution, and shows how countries and organizations grow in capabilities to operate, interact and benefit from them. The diagram below illustrates the five levels of maturity. The Health Information System Maturity Model (IS4H-MM) is a framework that guides health information systems along the path for change marked out by the information and knowledge revolution, and shows how countries and organizations can increase their capacity to operate, interact with, and benefit from these systems. The following diagram illustrates the five levels of maturity.
Assessment of the five progressive levels of IS4H-MM provides the knowledge needed to plan the way forward with plans and roadmaps for information systems. Maturity is assessed against key capability characteristics for each strategic goal at each level of the Maturity Model. The characteristics and components of the maturity levels are detailed below.
Goal 2 - Management and governance
Goal 3 - Knowledge management and sharing
Goal 4 - Innovation and performance
Digital Transformation Toolkit
The digital transformation toolkit was created with the aim of offering managerial, technical, knowledge, communication, and academic resources to all those health professionals, decision-makers, and institutions dedicated to strengthening health information systems, with the vision of achieving universal access to health and universal health coverage in the Region through access to good quality data, strategic information, and digital health tools for decision-making and well-being.
Eight guiding principles for digital transformation of the health sector
The digitization of health services implies important cultural changes for both health personnel and the population in general. These eight guiding principles are aimed at guiding the countries of the Region of the Americas in the processes of digital health transformation. Their purpose is to support them in making informed decisions, formulating short and long-term goals, and developing solid and sustainable public policies, leaving no one behind.
RELACSIS
RELACSIS is community of practice present in Latin America and the Caribbean since 2010. Our work is based on solidarity and cooperation among all the countries in the region in the investigation, documentation, definition, and design of practices to improve data quality, data analysis, and data interpretation for better situation assessments that can be used to formulate, monitor, and evaluate health policies. Among our main functions, we offer:
- Virtual course on how to correctly complete death certificates: Free access and free of charge. (Created to raise awareness among physicians and students in the region regarding the importance of correctly completing death certificates in order to identify the underlying causes of death and help complete the epidemiological profile of each country.)
- Virtual course for ICD-10 coders of medical information: First-course offering online training with tutors, designed to improve coding quality.
- ICD-11 Training Package: The online course "ICD – 11 tool" developed by the Department of Evidence and Intelligence for Action in Health (EIH) and the Virtual Campus of Public Health of the Pan American Health Organization. (It is relevant that the countries of the region know and apply the ICD- 11 in order to have a common framework and language to report, complete, use and share health information at a national and international level.)
Health in the Americas (HIA)
Health in the Americas (HIA) was created in 1954, and since its groundbreaking, the first edition in 1956 has been published fifteen times. Since its inception, it has been recognized as the flagship publication of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), being a unique report on the great advances, challenges, and trends in the field of health in the Region of the Americas.
HIA has a new way of viewing the flagship publication of the Pan American Health Organization. Since its creation in 1954, this publication has focused on one of the organization's main mandates, which is to collect and disseminate information on health conditions and trends in the countries and territories of the Americas and the Caribbean. A key way to fulfill this mandate is the publication of Health in the Americas+ (HIA+), a comprehensive report dedicated exclusively to monitoring and analyzing the health situation in the Region.
Its new portal now centralizes access to all information published in HIA, beginning with the current edition, which focuses on Potentially Avoidable Premature Mortality and includes new and more interactive ways to view data and compare information in different regions and countries, and reach the first edition, from 1954. We hope you enjoy this portal and return many times.
Core Indicators
The Regional Core Health Data and Country Profile Initiative (RCHDI) was launched by the Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in 1995 to monitor the attainment of health goals and compliance with the mandates adopted by the Member States and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB). The principal goal of Core Indicators is to monitor the population health in the Americas over time, by country, by subregions, and by the Region of the Americas. Moreover, core indicators serve to measure the progress towards agreed-upon commitments such as the country adopting PAHO mandates and strategies and the health and health-related Sustainable Development Indicators.
PAHO Core Indicators include data for 49 countries and territories of the Region of the Americas from 1995 to 2021 or the latest available year. The regional core indicators data set provides information from a combination of different data sources that allow a wide health situation perspective.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
