What systems are essential to achieving the sustainable development goals and what will it take to marshal them?

Abstract

The sustainable development goal (SDG) for health is linked to 67 indicators, eight times more than their predecessor, the Millenium Development Goals. In many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the information infrastructure is not yet able to collect and use the data needed for the indicators. As they seek to be responsive to the SDG agenda, LMICs must not lose sight of their local data needs; they should be cautious about embracing untested electronic technologies for data collection, analysis, and use; carefully balance the care provision and data collection responsibilities of care providers; and use evidence of what works in strengthening their health information systems (HIS). While attending to these concerns, countries can look for instances in which SDG indicators are in sync with their own HIS goals.

Measuring child survival for the Millennium Development Goals in Africa: what have we learned and what more is needed to evaluate the Sustainable Development Goals?

“…Given the interpretive complexity of the ecological study of factors predicting U5M at the country level, we initiated four country case studies to seek specific factors that may have influenced child survival within each country. Due to the limitations of health information systems in these countries [8] and quantitative indicator data to provide more nuanced understanding [9], we triangulated data from a policy review, qualitative key informant interviews with stakeholders working at multiple levels of the health system, and focus groups with women accessing services for their children (see supplemental file for interview and focus group discussion guides). Countries were chosen based on their U5M ARR between 1990 and 2011 (data available at the study's onset) and their health ministries' willingness to participate [10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…Without this overarching guidance, individual MNCH interventions remain fragmented and under-resourced [17][18][19][20]. Although some countries were able to effectively implement the monitor-review-act approach, greater investment in accurate, responsive, and integrated monitoring and evaluation systems will be needed to assess progress towards the more complicated and ambitious SDGs [8,[21][22][23][24].…”

Potential use cases for the development of an electronic health facility registry in Nigeria: Key informant’s perspectives

“…With the rise in the use of computers and information systems in healthcare delivery and the concomitant expansion of global health indicators, there has been undue emphasis on hardware and software in health information systems without similar effort on the people and processes that will make the systems work effectively (20). This is a major threat to the success of the MFL registry development endeavor in Nigeria and thus there is an increased need to educate and advocate to major stakeholders and decision makers on the need to address the HIS holistically including the establishment and empowerment of governance systems.…”

The Nigerian health information system policy review of 2014 : the need, content, expectations and progress

“…Abouzahr & Boerma argue that in many cases the expansion of national surveys in response to monitoring and evaluation for the Millennium Development Goals contributed to an adverse shift in focus away from the systematic institutional strengthening of routine country health information systems (Abouzahr & Boerma, ). Several authors have called for caution in the development of new HIS to better meet the data needs to adequately monitor national progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by LMIC (Nabyonga‐Orem, ; Thomas, Silvestre, Salentine, Reynolds, & Smith, ). This is because the proliferation of new health information systems will likely be vertical, require huge resources for their deployment and will further burden a system known to be weak and ineffective.…”