The West Africa Health Informatics Team (WAHIT), based at the West African Health Organization (WAHO), is a team of software developers and experts in health information systems (HIS) that provides on-demand technical assistance to countries while building local capacity in the region. Originally founded in the wake of the Ebola outbreak, WAHIT has proven to be pivotal in strengthening health information capacity at national and regional levels for both routine health information needs and disease surveillance. In the two years of their work, WAHIT’s activities have ranged from training on server management at a country level to consolidation of weekly IDSR data at a regional level to internal software development for WAHO. WAHIT has made an impression on local HIS stakeholders in West Africa. Their feedback has illustrated this support, both through regional HIS meetings and through an external evaluation. Their support of this initiative, along with the support from WAHO, has transformed this “moonshot” idea into an institutionalized team within WAHO. Originally a USAID-funded and managed activity, WAHO has committed to fully incorporating the team into its permanent organizational structure. The journey to institutionalization was not easy. There were many proposed models, many adaptations, negotiations, changes, and a highly involved management approach along the way. In this session, come to hear from USAID about those models, what worked and what didn’t, key decision points, and how, ultimately WAHO committed to sustaining this team.

Four years following the 2015 Ebola epidemic, innovative and collaborative local and regional initiatives have fostered notable improvements in health information systems (HIS) within the West Africa region. One initiative, WAHIT - the West African Health Informatics Team - started as a proof of concept initiative in partnership with the West African Health Organization (WAHO), Palladium/HP+ and the USAID Global Development Lab. WAHIT is a regional team comprised of software developers and informatics experts based in WAHO to build local capacity to support digital health systems in the region. In two years, WAHIT has trained over 150 local informatics experts and conducted 22 capacity strengthening Missions. By the end of 2019, it is expected that WAHIT will run solely through WAHO leadership, without the support of an implementing partner. This session will be co-presented by WAHIT’s Technical Team Lead, (Damola Olajide), with input from Palladium’s WAHIT Activity Manager (Liz Nerad) to collectively share the journey of establishing a regional model to build technical leadership for health information systems in order to empower countries in West Africa with high quality and timely data for decision-making and resource allocation. These improvements demonstrate that regional approaches supported by local staff and institutions can be powerful to scale and sustain HIS improvements in a short time frame Additionally, showing how the digital health community can reap returns from previous HIS investments by providing platform agnostic support, aiming to integrate country systems rather than recreate the wheel.