In most countries, health worker information is found across multiple and disparate systems making it very difficult to obtain a national picture of the entire health workforce. Moreover, maintaining accurate and up-to-date information on mobile and sometimes isolated workforce can be challenging in a low resource setting. A health worker registry overcomes these challenges by first aggregating the critical attributes for all health workers in the country from the multiple human resource information systems. Secondly, as a service to the health system, including smart devices and mHealth technologies, a health worker registry can securely share and validate health worker information using dependable and easy to adopt messaging standards.
This community includes individuals, NGOs, and governments who share a commitment to aggregating and making health workforce information accessible using international standards and open source technologies. It works primarily to develop, test, and provide implementation support for open source health worker registry standards, applications, and stakeholder guidance.
The OHIE-HWDM community has engaged with or is currently engaging with deployments in countries like Tanzania, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda. The OHIE-HWDM technologies are also being used in the Ebola response in West Africa to link health workforce information systems with mobile platforms to support health worker communication and coordination. With each installation, the size of the community grows, and the contextual experiences in each country contribute toward the improvement of the global OHIE Health Worker Registry application.
