The eMIS (electronic Management Information System) of DGFP is a digital initiative implemented in the Directorate General of Family Planning (DGFP), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Bangladesh with support from USAID-funded MEASURE Evaluation (later D4I), icddr,b and MaMoni MNCSP/Save the Children.
The pilot implementation of eMIS started in 2015 in 2 districts of Tangail and Habiganj. The results of pilots were positive, and the DGFP decided to scale up digital tools in other districts. The eMIS was scaled up in 37 out of 64 districts of Bangladesh at the end of March 2022.
The eMIS has been an organization-wide undertaking linking community level health and family planning workers with their supervisors and managers and finally to the central level officials. The tools cover both community and facility workers. The integration of the system means both the community level workers and facility level workers can share data of their clients among themselves. This helps to ensure continuum of care while tracking the patients for services for example, pregnant women and mothers for ante-natal care (ANC) or post-natal care (PNC).
The eMIS aimed to automate the business processes of field level workers and relied on mobile solutions for filed level workers. The eMIS as such is composed of a number of apps for each category of employees and their supervisors and managers. The system is supported by web-based applications and cloud server/databases.
The eMIS experience has been shared in a number of documents, as published in the MEASURE Evaluation website and later Data Form Impact (D4I) website. These documents are also made available in the rhis website. A few documents are described below:
The Sustainability of the Electronic Management Information System of Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Family Planning
This report was published in March 2020. It is established that the success rate of digital projects is very low and ensuring success requires commitment, leadership and institutional readiness. This report addresses the sustainability issues of eMIS. The report is organized in the following chapters: a) eMIS Tools and Their Implementation; b) Hardware acquisition and stock, c) Software Development and System Maintenance, d) Building capacities, e) Implementation arrangements and f) Data Use and Evidence-based Decision Making. The report came up with an Action Plan many items of which have been implemented in the meantime.
Implementation of the Electronic Management Information System in Bangladesh: Experience and Lessons Learned
This report was published by MEASURE Evaluation and uploaded in its website in September 2019. It describes lessons learnt in course of implementation of eMIS (electronic Management Information System) in 2 organizations under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Bangladesh. The report identified that digital tools developed for the community health and family planning workers have helped to bring changes in the way they perform their work in rural areas. Digital tools have also benefited the field supervisors and their managers. This resulted in emphasis on data quality, data visualization for performance management. Potential for establishing an accountability framework was also noted.
Strengthening Routine Health Information Systems through Electronic Management System in Bangladesh
This report was published in June 2018. It starts with organizational structures of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and organizations under its control. The tools how the eMIS tools are helping to strengthen the routine health information systems of Bangladesh through developing digital tools for use by different level of community health and family planning workers and their supervisors and managers at sub-district and district level as well as central officials.
In addition to above documents on eMIS, this website makes many other resources such as videos (mp4 files), presentation (ppt files), brochures (pdf), factsheets (pdf) etc., available in this website, which can be accessed here.
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