Building Health Management Information Systems in Egypt - PHRplus

information from the IDDSC. The divide between the IDDSC and other information system efforts
is significant.
Original plans for the Health Information System (HIS) developed under the Child
Survival (CS) Project call for the IDDSC to be the central processing and distribution point for
information coming from the governorates. The HIS team made a strong effort to integrate their
efforts with the HIC/IDDSC system. This approach has been abandoned due to coordination
problems. Continued HIS development by the Healthy Mother Healthy Child Project provides a
separate computer in each HIC solely for HIS processing.
For many years the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (CIDSC) collected
basic statistics from each major sector: agriculture, education, health, etc. In education, they are
able to get this information directly from a functioning MIS in the Ministry of Education. In
health, efforts to collect this information from IDDSC failed. Instead, they collect this information
directly from the governorate HICs.
Several newer information systems initiatives are underway outside the IDDSC. The
Technical Office of the Minister has been coordinating efforts with the Cabinet Information and
Decision Support Center (IDSC) to assume responsibility for a public Web site to distribute
information to the health sector in Egypt. The Sector for Population has started to build its own
information system. The IDDSC is not in a position to lead these efforts. Under the direction of
the Minister, the First Under Secretary for Basic and Preventive Care recently began meetings to
coordinate these efforts and development of the Health Information System (HIS) first by the
Child Survival Project, then the Healthy Mother Healthy Child Project.
2.5 Build Capacity to Support Information
Technology
The IDDSC reportedly has 19 professional personnel in its main center, 10 clerks, and 50
statistical technicians at other sites for a total of roughly 79 persons. Professional personnel
include physicians, statisticians, demographers, and computer specialists, all with university
degrees.
Computing equipment in the IDDSC consists of roughly twenty stand-alone PCS and a
variety of dot-matrix and laser printers. Outside the IDDSC, several PCS can be found in the
offices of undersecretaries and some general directors and in various project offices in MOHP
Headquarters. In the main MOHP building several PCS are connected in a small network through
a DEChub 90. In addition, the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (CIDSC)
recently installed an Internet gateway and Web server.
The IDDSC is not generally viewed as an Information Technology (IT) service
organization supporting the general needs of the Ministry. According to some sources, IDDSC
has perhaps only one or two capable computer specialists on staff. Apparently no department in
the Ministry has been given the responsibly for general IT strategic planning, support, and
operations. There is no written set of standards for IT platform components, no IT strategic plan,
no network administrator, no network operations staff, no hardware technicians, no PC training
program, and no help desk. The Ministry has no contracts with private sector companies to
provide any of these services. All this must be built from scratch to support the necessary
6 Building Health Management MIS in Egypt: The Role of Technical Support in USAID Program Assistance