openIMIS news March 2019

Get together of new partners at the international workshop of the openIMIS Implementers Committe

As the openIMIS Initiative is growing, this event brought together new partners. was to ensure that new implementing partners and potential user organizations of the Initiative became further familiarized with the mission and vision of the Initiative, with its history and past activities. Another overall objective of the workshop was to learn about different stakeholder expectations, definition of the roles and responsibilities as well as establishing a common planning for 2019. The participation of new and existing user organizations and national implementing partners was of special relevance in order to obtain insights on plannings, priorities and needs. During the workshop the 35 participants coming from Chad, Cameroon, Rwanda, Tanzania, Philippines, South Africa, Germany, Canada and Switzerland were able to gain insights about the Product Group consisting of the Implementers and Developers Committee, as well as the openIMIS Community. During interactive group work on the countries’ system and requirements as well as on architecture and interoperability framework, participants could exchange their experiences. There will be a follow up with the three potential new countries which participated in the workshop on their specific country needs in the upcoming weeks being Cameroon, chad and Rwanda. Also, as the university network around the openIMIS Community is growing, the Workshop counted with the participation of the Institute for Financial Management (IFM) of Tanzania. The aim is the incorporation of openIMIS in the university’s curriculum. The workshop created a mutual understanding of the Initiative and was a full success.

Conspicuousness at various events

The openIMIS Initiative not only organized a workshop, the openIMIS team also participated in various events and chased one conference after the other to present the openIMIS software and its tools. The openIMIS Initiative was presented at the Symposium: Health Insurance for the Informal Sector in Tanzania organized by Swiss TPH, one of the Initiative’s implementing partners, jointly with the Tanzanian Government in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on February 12-13 2019 with its own slot “International openIMIS Initiative and country experiences” on day two. The openIMIS Initiaitive was presented by Alicia Spengler from GIZ. A day after the symposium, a field trip to Morogoro was arranged by the local Swiss TPH team in Tanzania to see and experience openIMIS in practice. Visits to the Community Health Fund (CHF) Office enabled the participants of the field trip to observe the members’ enrolment process. Afterwards trips to health facilities in Sabasaba and Kingolwira were organized to witness the client identification and claims process. The participants were also able to have a discussion with the staff on client identification, service utilization and claim submission.

Furthermore, openIMIS was presented at the regional expert meeting on Inclusive Social Protection Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 19-20 2019. On the second day, openIMIS was presented by Slivery Mgonza, CHF Manager at the National Health Insurance Fund Tanzania during the session “Managing data and information for social protection”.

Scoping mission for potential piloting in Malawi

The openIMIS team jointly with Swiss TPH just realized a scoping mission in Malawi in order to explore and study the current processes in claims reimbursement under the so-called Service Level Agreement between the Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM) as provider and the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP).

The aim was enabling the mission team consisting of Viktoria Rabovskaja (GIZ) and Siddharth Srivastava (Swiss TPH) to establish the IT requirements and obtain an understanding to what extent software requirements are needed on site and how openIMIS can be a solution for more efficient processes. The openIMIS team will elaborate further on the outcomes of the scoping mission to provide an effective solution with openIMIS adjusted to their needs.

openIMIS Developers Committee Workshop

The first openIMIS Developers Workshop took place in Bonn, Germany, on February 25 until March 1, 2019. Twelve IT experts from Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Nepal, USA, South Africa and India participated in order to define the future system architecture and technical roadmap including programming language of the openIMIS software. As the openIMIS Initiative is growing and entering a new phase in the development of the openIMIS software, the aim of this workshop was to harmonise the efforts of the different teams that work together on the further development of the software. The focus was laid on establishing a joint mission for the future architecture and frame work, such as tools, platforms and modules. Furthermore, training on new technology options and existing tools was provided along with exercises. Another milestone of the workshop was to develop a joint work plan through reviews, identification and harmonisation of overlaps.