Building Health Management Information Systems in Egypt - PHRplus

5.0 Strategy
Despite significant challenges, there are positive signs. There is increasingly strong
political support for health sector reform. There is widespread recognition that a working
information system is necessary to undertake and monitor this reform. Reorganization of key
information system departments is underway. Despite low salaries, there are bright, capable
people in the MOHP. Existing projects contain many important elements of the information
system. These include a very complete, well-designed system to collect information from
preventive and primary health care facilities, several hospital management systems in various
stages of development, and management components for governorate health directorates. The
telecommunications environment is improving, with a proliferation of Internet Service Providers in
major urban areas, and a VSAT system now being installed in the governorates by the CIDSC.
There is broad interest in coordinating all these elements. Before beginning, it is important to
define the most basic elements of a Management Information System.
5.1 Basic Elements
A good Management Information System provides timely, accessible, relevant and
accurate information to decision-makers. The MIS should do the following:
> provide managers with the right information at the right time. Information must be
current.
> provide the information required by the type of decision being made. Information must be
relevant.
> ensure that decision-makers have access to information they need. Having access means
having the formal authority to get the information, as well as getting the information in an
appropriate format.
> ensure that the information is accurate. The less accurate the information, the less useful it
is.
For a system to achieve these goals, its development must take into account three critical
ingredients:
> people
> processes
> technology
Focusing on only one of these three ingredients yields poor results. Under the label of
MIS, many organizations do a good job collecting and computerizing large amounts of
information, but fail to deliver useful information to decision-makers. Much of the effort is spent
collecting unused data.
Often the focus is on information technology at the expense of human resource and
organizational development. Though technological problems exist, they are far easier to resolve
than human resource and organizational problems. HIO and HIS development are good examples;
most remaining concerns are human resource and organizational problems.
Required human resources can be classified in three categories:
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