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Benchmarking : Master Facility List (MFL)

Benchmarking : Master Facility List (MFL)

A Master Facility List (MFL) is a critical national health registry that maintains standardized, authoritative information on health facilities. It enables interoperability between EMRs, health financing systems like openIMIS, and health surveillance systems by ensuring all stakeholders reference the same facility identifiers.

Key considerations when selecting an MFL system include:

  • FHIR & OpenHIE Compatibility: Ability to expose facility data using Location and Organization FHIR resources.

  • Data Governance & Stewardship: Support for facility metadata ownership, verification, versioning, and validation.

  • Geospatial & Administrative Hierarchy Mapping: Linkage to regions, catchment areas, and GPS coordinates.

  • Scalability & Maintenance: Ability to support national-scale infrastructure with open APIs for external systems.

  • Integration & Interoperability: Support for syncing with DHIS2, openIMIS, and health service directories via middleware like openHIM.

 

GOFR (Global Open Facility Registry)

Integration & Standards:
GOFR is purpose-built to serve as a national MFL aligned with OpenHIE and DCI standards. It natively supports FHIR (Location, Organization), enabling integration with openHIM, openIMIS, and other FHIR-based systems.

Security & Governance:
It includes built-in workflows for deduplication, validation, version tracking, and metadata governance. Facility records can be enriched with source attribution and audit trails.

Scalability & Monitoring:
Designed as a lightweight web application, GOFR scales from local pilots to national deployments. It integrates easily with middleware (e.g., openHIM) and offers monitoring via standard API analytics tools.

 

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iHRIS Facility Registry

Integration & Standards:
Part of the iHRIS suite (from IntraHealth), this module supports facility hierarchies and can expose data via FHIR when integrated with HAPI FHIR. While not as widely deployed as GOFR, it aligns with openHIE’s Facility Registry component.

Security & Governance:
Includes support for metadata control, user roles, and facility data ownership. However, more customization is typically needed to implement DCI-style deduplication or lineage tracking.

Scalability & Monitoring:
Scales well in iHRIS environments, especially where HR and facility governance are managed jointly. Monitoring and reporting depend on external tool integration.

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Benchmarking Comparison in the openIMIS Sandbox Context

Criteria

GOFR

iHRIS Facility Registry

Criteria

GOFR

iHRIS Facility Registry

FHIR Support

✅ Native FHIR (Location, Org)

⚠️ Supported via HAPI integration

Integration with openIMIS

✅ Direct via FHIR + openHIM

⚠️ Possible via openHIM

Governance & Stewardship

✅ Validation, deduplication, audit

⚠️ Metadata support; less automation

Geospatial & Admin Hierarchy

✅ Strong with GIS and levels

✅ Admin hierarchy + coordinates

Scalability & Extensibility

✅ Lightweight, modular deployment

✅ Scalable with iHRIS installations

Community & Maintenance

✅ Maintained by PATH

✅ Maintained by IntraHealth

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