Presentation at ICT4D: How low cost technology can standardize and bring greater transparency to micro-insurance schemes.

Xuân-Mai Kempf from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) presents openIMIS and its implementation in the South-Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In many low- and middle-income countries, community-based health insurance schemes are being promoted to protect populations from catastrophic payments for health care. Increasingly non state actors are establishing mechanisms to provide financial protection from healthcare costs. Managing insurances schemes is a complex field requiring specific tools and expertise for professionalized operations as well as raising new challenges for the stewardship and regulation of health systems. In 2017, a pilot implementation of an ICT-based Insurance Management Information System (IMIS) was made with eight Mutuelles de santé in South-Kivu province with support from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation. The pilot has shown how introducing IMIS can standardize the operational processes, increasing fraud control, creating greater transparency regarding financial transactions with health facilities, as well as generating transparent scheme performance parameters for health system stakeholders. With support from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) and the German Corporation for Development Cooperation (GIZ), IMIS developed into openIMIS, an open source solution, in order to make it more broadly available to countries and organizations.