Information and Communication Technologies for Development: Strengthening Southern-Driven Cooperation as a Catalyst for ICT4D

Abstract

Health information dashboards, which are collections of relevant indicator visualizations for management, have become a common feature and strategy for improved information use in the health sector. They should provide any manager with quality information in a format that points out the perfor- mance of health service provision, and thus necessitate good knowledge of visualization techniques to both develop and interpret. Since health management is a dispersed and decentralized activity, dashboards need to be relevant to varied users, and various administrative levels of the health services. This can be achieved by enabling all users to make their own dashboards, based on the indicators they need, and presented in a suitable manner to track the local priority activities. In this study we examine user-defined dashboards in Indonesia, which has implemented a flexible and open source platform for health management (DHIS2). While the technical flexibility of the platform has been taken advantage of by providing platform customization training, the study finds that the quality of the dashboards created face numerous challenges. These challenges point to poor visualization competence. We conclude by calling for such competence to be addressed by the training curricula, as well as by utilizing existing “best practice” dashboards from WHO now available for the same platform. Keywords: