Journal Article

Health information systems: the foundations of public health

Boerma, Ties, AbouZahr, Carla

2005

Overview

Public health decision-making is critically dependent on the timely availability of sound data. The role of health information systems is to generate, analyse and disseminate such data. In practice, health information systems rarely function systematically. The products of historical, social and economic forces, they are complex, fragmented and unresponsive to needs. International donors in health are largely responsible for the problem, having prioritized urgent needs for data over longer-term country capacity-building. The result is painfully apparent in the inability of most countries to generate the data needed to monitor progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Solutions to the problem must be comprehensive; money alone is likely to be insufficient unless accompanied by sustained support to country systems development coupled with greater donor accountability and allocation of responsibilities. The Health Metrics Network, a global collaboration in the making, is intended to help bring such solutions to the countries most in need.

• Publisher: World Health Organization,The World Health Organization
• Subject: Accountability / Analysis / Capacity building approach / Capacity development / Cholera / Data / Data collection / Decision Making / Demography / Developing countries / Donors / Epidemics / Epidemiology / Estadística / Formulación de políticas / Global Health / Health care / Health indicators / Health information / Health information services / Health policy / Health Policy & Services / Health services / Health Status Indicators / Households / Indicadores de salud / Information / Information management / Information sources / Information systems / Information Systems - organization & administration / Information technology / Maternal & child health / Medical advice systems / Money / Mortality / Policy Making / Population / Prestación de atención de salud / Public health / Public Health Informatics / Recolección de datos / Registration / Research Article / Sistemas de información / Socioeconomic factors / Statistics / Toma de decisiones