Wrap-up

• Raúl Julián Ruggia-Frick, Head of Centre for Excellence Knowledge / International Social Security Association (ISSA)

 Raúl J. Ruggia-Frick sums up the rationale again for a global good in health and social protection and thus, contextualises previous presentations and discussions: “There is a real gap and need for a standardised software component for health and social protection that enables users to carry-out business processes like enrolment, service provision, claims management, monitoring and reporting.” For partner countries, when looking for such a component, two challenges come up: 

• Cost aspect: For institutions to cover costs for the development of systems from the scratch and carrying out all steps of implementation is very costly. It is better to use these resources on the deployment and customisation of existing solutions and cover the capacity development linked to it. 

• Complexity aspect: There is a complexity in developing management information systems and in the coordination of the implementation plus training of users. Therefore, the deployment organisation plays a key role in enabling this type of project.

As Raúl J. Ruggia-Frick concludes, the tool and the community introduced by the openIMIS initiative present an example of how to address both these challenges. “What we heard, is an example on how to develop such a system, the evolution of the system so far, how to implement it in partner countries and how to exchange ideas on the next steps.” The presentations and the contributions during the group work showed, openIMIS already has a number of functionalities. It is operational, but it will require further customisation to fit more social protection schemes. On the other hand, there are common requirements the system can address in health and social protection. An evolution of the system to stress the common parts and address diverging needs through additional modules and functionalities will help expanding the service spectrum beyond health.