Ministry Of Health Professionals Receive Specialized Training To Help Strengthen The Entry And Visualization Of Health Data

The training sessions were led by facilitators from the University of Oslo, who are also the developers of the DHIS2 platform. They took the opportunity to share expert knowledge and practical insights with participants. Team members from the Environmental Health Division, the Health Management Information Unit (HMIU) and the Epidemiology Unit were among those who benefitted from the training sessions.

PAHO Advisor for Health Surveillance, Disease Prevention and Control Dr. Prabhjot Singh emphasized that the initiative forms part of PAHO’s continued commitment to digital transformation in Saint Lucia. “PAHO has been deeply involved in supporting the digital transformation of the health sector of Saint Lucia for a while now and during COVID-19 we’ve learnt a lot of lessons of why this is so important and going forward it is the cracks that we are making steps that the country is resilient to future shocks, whatever that might be. In that perspective we are currently supporting the country to do a platform DHIS 2 which is very commonly used across the world, mostly in African nation countries but has not so frequently been used in the Caribbean countries and just three years ago we were just discussing where this DHIS2 platform could be useful and today we have gotten deep into using it and analyzing it and moving forward and that is something I think the country should feel proud of, that they are moving at such a fast pace and involving such a wide sector of health in this.”

Information Systems Manager at the Health Management Information Unit (HMIU), Gisele Jn Baptiste-Cadette highlighted the importance of integrating the District Health Information Software DHIS2 into Saint Lucia’s broader health data framework. “We have a platform called the DHIS2 platform which we use to supplement our Saint Lucia Health Information System (SLUHIS). So we migrate all non-clinical functions to the DHIS2 to complement our Health Information System and currently the Environmental Health Unit they use it for the arbovirus and complaints module and we’re also planning to put the cancer registry on the platform as well. So that capacity building workshop has really helped us to take the bull by the horns and do the work ourselves instead of depending on a consultant to put the visualizations and whatever we need on the platform for us. So now we have the in-house capacity, so we could do that one our own.”