Gone are the days when the district level public heath related data used to be collected after long intervals of time. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has set up the Health Management Information System (HMIS) interface which will provide district and state level health related data easily and speedily. Health officials are going to be involved in the project of uploading this data on the HMIS portal online on monthly basis.

As per the recent guidelines issued by the MoHFW, all the states in the country are supposed to increase the scope of the collection of the above mentioned data. The states are thus also supposed to compile health data from the levels the district level.

The initiative is yet to strengthen its roots at the mass level and reach the public at large. The Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) which is the Population Research Centre in the city carried out a detailed analysis of the information gathered from the health officials from various districts. Mr. R Nagarajan who works as a Reader in the Population Research Centre, GIPE and who is one of the members of the MoHFW core committee for HMIS was talking to the correspondents on Saturday. He said that the team of qualified readers has been assigned for the analysis of the quality-related aspects in the data. The team will point out the discrepancies and also suggest the potential rectifications.

He also stated that the Mo HFW referred to the other sources like the civil registration system and sample registration system which are used in the demographical projects.

Mr. Nagrajan said, “However, there were certain deficiencies in the civil registration system, while the sample registration system gave data only on the state level. The national family health survey (NFHS) too was a state-level survey, while the district level household survey (DLHS) is conducted once in five years. In order to overcome such limitations in these data-collection systems, the HMIS was introduced, for it helps cull monthly compilation of health data from public and private institutions in rural and urban areas across the country.”

The heath data are divided into five categories encompassing 17 different modules. Mr. Nagrajan further said, “The data are based on aspects such as reproductive health, national health programs, health facility services, monthly inventory status and mortality details. These categories have 17 different modules based on which the data are collected.”

The collected information on the HMIS portal can be used in the study of the present trends and status of a number of health related issues. The data is going to be useful in the demographic studies and implementation of various health programs and government schemes. The authenticity of the stats and the facts collected on the HMIS portal will be more than the data which was being captured at the district levels till now.

- Yogesh Sapre