Implementation of District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) in Sri Lanka

Abstract

District Health Information Software (DHIS) 2 is a tool for collection, validation, analysis, and presentation of aggregate and transactional data, tailored (but not limited) to integrated health information management Subodha Manoj et al/ Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics 2012;3(4):109-114 110 activities (http://www.dhis2.org). In this paper we describe the introduction of DHIS2 to Sri Lanka and share our views on challenges and opportunities. DHIS2 Overview District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) is an open-source software initially developed by the Health Information Systems Programme (HISP) at the University of Oslo. Since then it has evolved into a globally distributed development strategy (1) . Today developers from many countries including Norway, India, Vietnam, Tanzania, Ireland take part in the ongoing developments of the DHIS 2 platform (2) . In general, DHIS 2 can be described as a " tool for collection, validation, analysis, and presentation of aggregate statistical data, tailored (but not limited) to integrated health information management activities " (3) . The users of DHIS 2 platform can customise the web based software package according to their health information needs without having to know or learn a complex programming language. This was made possible because DHIS 2 is a generic tool based on an open meta-data model and a flexible user interface (4) .