DHIS

The District Health Information Software (DHIS) is used in more than 40 countries around the world. DHIS is an open source software platform for reporting, analysis and dissemination of data for all health programs, developed by the Health Information Systems Programme (HISP). The core development activities of the DHIS 2 platform (see note on releases and versions further down) are coordinated by the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, and supported by NORAD, PEPFAR, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, UNICEF and the University of Oslo.

The solution covers aggregated data (e.g. routine health facility data, staffing, equipment, infrastructure, population estimates), and event data (disease outbreaks, survey/audit data, patient satisfaction surveys, longitudinal patient records etc.). The system supports the capture of data linked to any level in an organisational hierarchy, any data collection frequency, a high degree of customisation at both the input and output side. DHIS 2 comes with easy to use analytics through tailored Dashboards, charts, pivot tables and maps, and can be extended with Apps or used by third-party software through the open Web-API. It has been translated into a number of languages.

The DHIS was originally developed for three health districts in Cape Town in 1998-99, but has since spread via the HISP network to more than 40 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin-America. The initial scope - routine monthly Primary Health Center data – has systematically been expanded to cover nearly all aspects of health data and information, and recently been used by other sectors such as Education, Water and Sanitation, Forestry, and Food Security.

Versions and releases

DHIS (by HISP community) is available in several versions:

• DHIS 1.3
• DHIS 1.4
• DHIS 2

DHIS 1.3 and 1.4

The DHIS version 1 series goes back to 1996 and was developed on the Microsoft Access platform consisting of VBA for the interface or program logic (front-end), Access as a database (back-end), Excel for reporting and Windows as the OS. DHIS 1.4 (from 2005) is a significant overhaul of the version 1.3 database structure, using various output formats for reporting. It bridges the gap between DHIS 1.3 and 2.

DHIS 2

DHIS 2 (from 2008) is a continuation of DHIS version 1 developed on open source Java technologies and available as an online web application. The first release, version 2.0, came in February 2008 after three years of development releases, and the most recent (as of January 2016) version is 2.22. DHIS 2 is developed using open-source Java frameworks and tools, such as the Spring Framework, Hibernate, Struts2, Maven, and JUnit. Follow the latest DHIS 2 development on the DHIS 2 Launchpad site and read more on the Official DHIS 2 site.^[1]

References

External links to DHIS

• DHIS 2 site
• DHIS 2 on Launchpad (development platform)
• DHIS 2 and HISP background - the research network
• DHIS2 translations site
• Video on DHIS 2 in Ghana by Norad
• DHIS 1.4 site

DHIS by Eycon for Pakistan

Another software with the same name "DHIS" is developed by Eycon. This software is being used by Ministry of Health Government of Pakistan. Its Development history goes back to early 90's when an MS Access based system named Hospital Management Information System - HMIS was developed and was used in Health department. In its Next version the DHIS was developed using opensource technologies by AZM, funded by JICA . While in the upcoming and present version it was developed for the online system as a web based application by Eycon Pvt Ltd^[1] and funded by TRF . Which is now being used in Pakistani Health Department for the maintenance of Data of Health Facilities and is managed , supported by Eycon Pvt.

External links to DHIS (by Eycon)

• DHIS Punjab site
• DHIS KPK site¨

1. ↑ Eycon Pvt Ltd www.eycon.co