The open The open-source Insurance Management Information System (openIMIS) is the first open-source software that manages social (health) protection schemes by linking beneficiary, provider, and payer data. With a modular structure, openIMIS can be modified according to country-specific needs.
The initiative aims to contribute to the “gradual "gradual inclusion of hitherto excluded populations into social (health) protection schemes by improving the schemes’ schemes' data and information management capacities through openIMIS.” " Part of its objectives is to complement ICT infrastructure for Insurance insurance and other finance mechanisms with openIMIS or specific modules.
To achieve its goal, one One of the expected outputs of the initiative is the establishment of establishing a Community of Practice (CoP) for openIMIS users in existing networksexisting users and interested groups to inform the direction and development of openIMIS. Currently being implemented in Tanzania, Nepal, and Nepalselect countries, the openIMIS initiative collaborated with the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) to expand its reach in Asia.
The Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) promotes better use of information communication technology (ICT) to achieve better health through peer-to-peer assistance and knowledge sharing and learning through a regional approach for greater country-level impacts across South and Southeast Asia.
To inform the direction and development of openIMIS, AeHIN will create a regional CoP in Asia that will provide country
AeHIN is a collaboration of digital health advocates created by the World Health Organization in 2011 to help Asian countries with digital health development. It has helped build capacity in the region by laying down national health information foundations: (1) governance; (1) architecture, (3) program management; and (4) standards, and interoperability.
In 2019, AeHIN established an openIMIS regional hub (Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka) in Asia to provide country-input on challenges, priorities, and user user requirements for the system. These insights are expected to refine knowledge products on ICT solutions for social (health) protection at the global level.
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openIMIS, especially in the academic setting.
Since then, partner universities and groups have started using openIMIS to demonstrate a health information system's core functionalities and a social health insurance scheme's critical business processes.
The openIMIS Regional Hub Asia consists of health education institutions, medical student associations
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, and other related networks that actively review, implement, and evaluate openIMIS
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in various use cases, particularly in the academic setting, to support the application of ICT solutions for social health protection
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Goal:
Management of social health insurance and other health protection schemes to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) through openIMIS
Vision:
Position openIMIS as a global a global good that can support the application of concepts and skills on social health protection and health informatics
Mission:
Strengthen the openIMIS community in Asia by
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localizing capacity-building strategies and supplementary knowledge materials with the reality of concrete country cases
Scope:
Application of openIMIS as an Academic Learning Tool (Primary)
CONTEXT: In the in the 2018 AeHIN General Meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, AeHIN member countries expressed their interest for a digital tool which may be used by health faculty and students to learn about the functionality of social health insurance processes in an interactive learning environment.
POTENTIAL USE CASE: Health education institutes may benefit from openIMIS by using it to demonstrate core functionalities of a UHC system and business processes of a social health insurance scheme
Interoperability of openIMIS with Multiple Health Information Systems (Secondary/Upon Request)
CONTEXT: Asia is a host to a wide range of siloed and oftentimes vendor-based health information systems being used by various health facilities. Since AeHIN’s inception in 2012, countries have reiterated the importance of data exchange among these health information systems at the national level.
POTENTIAL USE CASE: To introduce openIMIS in the region, it is crucial to demonstrate its interoperability with other systems in the digital health ecosystem of a country.
Target Audience:
Health Education Institutions
Asian Medical Student Associations
In-country Interoperability Labs
Strategy and Activites:
Establishment of Country Hubs
Advocate for the establishment and strengthening of the openIMIS Asia Regional Hub , with a particular focus on the Asian Medical Student Associations and Health Education Institutions
Form a network of faculty members who will advocate the use of openIMIS (for teaching)
Form a network of medical/nursing students who will advocate the use of openIMIS (for learning)
Create further use cases to support countries with little experience in health financing
Development of Information, Education, and Communication Materials
Conduct needs assessment on how Health Education Institutions can integrate openIMIS into their curricula
Develop short courses on setting-up and using openIMIS in Health Education Institutions
Prepare training materials on setting-up and using openIMIS in Health Education Institutions
Capacity-building and Technology Transfer
Conduct training of trainers workshop/s among country hubs (inception, capacity-building, and completion workshop)
September 12, 2019 - openIMIS ToT Workshop in the Philippines (UP Manila)
September 21, 2019 - openIMIS ToT Workshop in the Philippines (St. Luke's Medical Center)
Provide an online meeting and online training platform to demonstrate the application of openIMIS in Asia
Provide an enterprise architecture tool to manage architectural artifacts of openIMIS in Asia
Create separate cloud instances for openIMIS In each country
Interoperability Testing (Upon Request)
Test the interoperability of openIMIS with health information systems being used in a country
Integrate the country’s preferred health information system with openIMIS
Regional Knowledge Sharing and Networking
Conduct knowledge sharing activities to document experiences of openIMIS Asia Regional Hub (best practices, lessons learned, and technical recommendations)
Conduct webinars on the progress of openIMIS Asia Regional Hub
Conduct face-to-face meetings to gather the country hubs of the openIMIS Asia Regional Hub
Promote openIMIS through digital marketing and public relations initiatives in Asia
Strengthening of Global Public Goods
Support the openIMIS community in its implementation and capacity development strategy with focus on experiences from Asia
Coordinate with openIMIS Africa Regional Hub to develop global goods
Connect with Health Education Institutions in Europe and Africa on incorporating openIMIS in the academic setting
Document the activities conducted in the openIMIS wiki (wiki.openimis.org)
Progress:
August 2019
OpenIMIS successfully installed in AWS by Ms. Rose Ann Zuniga (Health Systems Expert)
Documentation: openIMIS_1.020installation
openIMIS instances:
UPM: bit.ly/upm-openimis
SLMC: bit.ly/slmc-openimis
Indonesia: http://bit.ly/idn-openimis
Sri Lanka: http://bit.ly/slk-openimis
Contact Persons:
Dr Alvin Marcelo
Executive Director
Kristin Chloe Pascual
Operations and CoP Management
Charisse Orjalo
Online Community Management
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Objectives:
Continue facilitating regional knowledge sharing and networking around openIMIS;
Develop a regional capacity-building program on health financing and digital heath with openIMIS as the laboratory component; and
Expand the openIMIS community of practice in Asia by supporting open source ecosystems for national and subnational schemes.
Contact Persons:
Dr Alvin Marcelo
Executive Director
Kristin Chloe Pascual
Operations and CoP Management
Charisse Orjalo
Online Community Management
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2021 Activities
AeHIN 7th General Meeting
AeHIN held its seventh AeHIN General Meeting virtually last January 7, 14, 21, and 28, 2021. This year’s theme discussed ‘Strengthening Regional Health Systems Response to COVID-19 focusing on digital health experiences in Asia.’ A total of 328 participants from 42 countries in and outside of the Asian region attended the conference.
During the opening ceremony, AeHIN partners shared messages carrying the importance of the Governance, Architecture, Project Management, and Standards and Interoperability (GAPS) Framework in digital health to set the context of the whole conference.
Mr. Saurav Bhattarai, GIZ Advisor, discussed using standards-based tools and leveraging what is already available to avoid duplication of efforts. He stressed that “we needed digital health tools running on open and standards-based architectures that facilitate interoperability to ensure that we can effectively fight the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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On the third day of the conference, AeHIN facilitated a parallel community meeting for the openIMIS Regional Hub Asia (Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka) to gather their ideas on best moving forward with the community of practice.
One of the suggestions in the meeting was to use a standard learning management system for learning openIMIS and to scale up the visibility of openIMIS in policy-oriented discussions in respective countries. Participants also suggested using openIMIS as a bridge to strengthen the collaboration between the ministry of finance and the ministry of health.
The AeHIN Partner Share session followed the parallel community meeting, wherein Saurav Bhattarai gave updates on the openIMIS initiative. He shared about their continued support in existing openIMIS implementations that manage the data of over five million beneficiaries.
The initiative has also been working on new implementations and functionalities and expanding openIMIS for other social protection schemes. openIMIS is also strengthening its focus on interoperability. Saurav Bhattarai discussed that they have been “mapping openIMIS data model to be FHIR-compliant as well as working on direct interoperability with our other global goods such as DHIS2, OpenMRS, and Bahmni.”
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Another important update from the openIMIS Initiative was the openIMIS Catalytic Implementation Fund that intends to “provide support to scheme operators that want to use openIMIS to manage their various social health protection schemes or beyond.”
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AeHIN Hour - openIMIS Webinars 2021
Since 2019, AeHIN and the openIMIS have organized webinars to help bring information, updates, and discussions about openIMIS between the initiative and its communities of practice in Asia.
Saurav Bhattarai and Konstanz Lange, Advisors from the openIMIS Coordination Desk in GIZ, were the speakers at the first AeHIN-openIMIS webinar for 2021 held on March 9.
In this webinar, they introduced the openIMIS Catalytic Implementation Fund, a “mechanism to allow resources to be made available for getting started with openIMIS implementations.”
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The speakers also explained the various use cases where it can be applied and provided details on the procedures related to getting access to the fund.
The webinar recording is available at https://youtu.be/4lfv_SlXjwE .
Other openIMIS webinars are available at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN7M3nT7qGnfu329R2YTiuLQV_m4J6vIO .
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openIMIS Enrollment App Testing
In mid-March, the AeHIN secretariat team contributed to testing the openIMIS enrollment application.
AeHIN focused on testing the openIMIS enrollment application via Android. The team used the openIMIS test link in documenting the test results.
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openIMIS Virtual Meetings
On March 17, 25, and 31, AeHIN participated in the openIMIS virtual community meetings spearheaded by the openIMIS coordination desk. On the first day, AeHIN co-facilitated the session on ‘Community-driven openIMIS 5th Anniversary Campaign.’ The session collated ideas from the implementers to further promote openIMIS’ anniversary.
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Lao PDR Convergence Workshop - Use of openIMIS in Nepal
The Ministry of Health Lao PDR hosted a digital health convergence workshop last March 30-31, 2021. The workshop aims to help strengthen the digital health sector of Lao with the help of experts from the Asia eHealth Information Network, development partners, and other government agencies in the country.
The workshop's expected outcome is to develop a digital health architecture blueprint and a digital health strategy for the Lao PDR health sector. These outcomes will help improve stakeholder coordination and harmonization towards a sustainable and interoperable health information system.
AeHIN presented the AeHIN Mind the GAPS (Governance, Architecture, Program Management, and Standards, and Interoperability) Framework, which was the basis of strategy development sessions during the workshop.
Neighboring countries also shared their experiences in the Digital Health Strategy Development session. Since its first digital health convergence workshop, Dr. Bikash Devkota, Director of Quality Standards and Regulation Division from the Ministry of Health and Population Nepal, shared Nepal's digital health journey.
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According to Dr. Devkota, one of the lessons they learned is that digitalization is a significant component of quality care as it makes service easier and efficient. With this regard, Nepal prioritized digitalization in health.
Dr. Damodar Basaula, Executive Director of Health Insurance Board Nepal, discussed how openIMIS played a big part in the country’s health digitalization, especially in managing Nepal’s national health insurance scheme.
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The Health Insurance Scheme of Nepal is a contribution-based Security Health Insurance (SHI) scheme with subsidies for the ultra-poor, poor, and the marginalized. The Nepal Health Insurance Board (HIB) manages it entirely. It is currently implemented in 69 districts and has a total of 3.7 million beneficiaries.
openIMIS supports the management of the core business processes of the Nepal HIB from the enrollment to verification of beneficiaries, claims generation, claims review, and data analysis. At present, there are 375 hospitals using openIMIS to send claims digitally, and there are 7,335 openIMIS users.
Since 2016, the Nepal HIB has been part of the openIMIS community of practice. They report bugs and issues, request new features, and discuss various technical topics with the community. The openIMIS community has provided them with a platform for exchange and regular updates, especially new features.
Dr. Basaulaa shared that the use of openIMIS in Nepal expedited the implementation of the Management Information System (MIS) for health insurance in Nepal. They also received support from the community of practice when needed, and the new versions of the openIMIS software are available regularly.
Nepal has learned that they need local capacities to manage and maintain software. Local teams have to lead implementations, and the openIMIS global community is available to support their local efforts.
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AeHIN x APMC-SN M.D.igital 2021: National Telehealth Convention
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AeHIN has co-presented this year’s M.D.igital Telehealth Convention with the theme “The Role of Medical Students in the Global Digital Health Strategy 2020-2025” last April 24-25, 2021.
The online conference, initiated by the Association of Philippine Medical Colleges Student Network (APMC-SN), served as a venue to discuss the role of medical students in the Global Digital Health Strategy 2020-2025. Four hundred sixty-one attendees attended the event.
In the international session, Saurav Bhattarai, Advisor from GIZ, introduced openIMIS, an open-source information system for managing insurance schemes and other related use cases. Saurav also discussed how systems can interoperate with openIMIS. openIMIS is being implemented in Nepal, Cameroon, Tanzania, Chad, and DRC.
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The conference proceedings and the MDigital Paper will also be shared once available.
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