Description of Session
Imagine two big rooms within Kenya’s Ministry of Health (MOH) packed with cluttered paperwork. Over 50,000 health worker (HW) personnel files are stacked high – pure chaos for finding information about the health workforce and making it impossible to aggregate data and provide broad perspectives. The result – decisions relating to health workforce planning, hiring, deployment, and training are irrational and not based on evidence. Then this problem got bigger. In 2010, Kenya enacted a new constitution, decentralizing health system management from one national hub to 47 county governments. With devolution, health workers moved haphazardly across counties based on preference. In addition, each county was rapidly hiring more HWs with no functional system to track health workforce growth or movement. Meanwhile, technology was playing an increasingly crucial role in Kenyans’ lives. Families and friends were connecting online, the banking industry had transformed, and virtual learning was taking shape in education institutions. IntraHealth International worked with Kenya’s government to bridge the devolution and technology revolutions and organize and digitize MOH’s personnel files and enter them into its open source integrated human resources information system (iHRIS). IntraHealth trained counties to use the centralized system, enabling each county to independently manage their own HWs. Now all 47 counties and national stakeholders have access to information on more than 67,000 health workers, including their workstations and training. These data are used at county and national levels for planning, budgeting, recruitment, deployment, and training. This session will take the audience through the journey of iHRIS in Kenya, within a changing governance and technological environment. The session will share challenges, lessons learned and, data product utilization, linkage of iHRIS to other systems, and how this has improved workforce management in Kenya.
