Health Informatics
A useful starting point for learning about health informatics is the OUP Publication “Public Health Informatics- Designing for Change; A Developing Country Perspective.” (Sundeep Sahay, Sundararaman, John Braa, 2017) This book provides a historical account of the development of the discipline, and the very many purposes it serves. It then deals with some of the core problematics of informatics – the poor use of information, the challenge of integration, the institutional barriers, the measurement of systems performance, and the issues related to governance and standards. Not an easy book to go through- but a must read.
One could follow that with an overview article, Towards A Research Agenda On Health Information Systems For Universal Health Coverage–presented and published in the Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, Negombo, Sri Lanka, May 2015, pages 137 to 148. This same theme also informed another presentation: Building Locally Relevant Models For Universal Health Coverage And Its Implications For Health Information Systems: Some Reflections From India.
For the practitioner one good introduction to HMIS is the set of HMIS manuals that NHSRC prepared in 2009 to 2011 for building decentralized district and state capacity on collection and analysis of use of information for action. We have enclosed both Volume 1 – the Service Providers Manual and Volume 2 – Health Programme Managers Manual and Volume 4- the HMIS Resource Persons Manual. The last of these sets out many problematics related to HMIS and is a must read for those interested in design of HMIS and health informatics as an academic discipline and area of research. It has great illustrations that make it easy to read. To make it more accessible, we have also posted a power-point– Problematics of Public Health Management Information Systems– An illustrated Beginners Guide: .
We have posted two documents which are essential reading for understanding some aspects of the evolution of HMIS in the early years of NRHM. The first of these is a letter, (dt. 10 Nov.2008) on implementation of HMIS that succinctly explains the proposed architecture of information flow and use. The second is a Case study of the HMIS reform in Odisha state, 2005 to 2014. This also highlights the role of DHIS-2. (pg 51 to 54, Public Health Informatics, Designing for Change, Sundeep Sahay,). A third document of historical interest is A Study of Public Health Informatics in India done by NHSRC in 2011 as its contribution to the sector innovation council on health.
For an understanding of the contemporary challenges of public health informatics, one useful article is “Where is all our health data going” by Sundeep Sahay and Arunima Mukherjee, published in EPW, 2020. Finally for an update on the current stage of digitization on health in India- which is in two parts. The first part is the Conversation on Decoding the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission and the second part is Conversation on Health Information Systems.