Health Data Ecosystem Mapping: Malawi
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) launched the Digital Innovation in Pandemic Control (DIPC) project in 2021 to bring digital health technical expertise to countries to create more pandemic-prepared health systems. The DIPC project provided an award to Digital Square to partner with ministries of health and other key stakeholders from November 2022 to 2024 to scale the use of digital tools for COVID-19 and routine vaccination planning, deployment, and monitoring. The DIPC project is creating models for improved and more sustainable pandemic-prepared health systems with a focus on immunization workflows using three exemplar countries: Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania.
Scaling the Use of Digital Tools for Vaccination Planning, Deployment, and Monitoring
Digital Square partnered with Malawi’s Ministry of Health’s (MOH) Digital Health Division (DHD) and Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) to better understand the digital systems currently used to support immunization by conducting a desk review, holding consultative sessions, and convening a workshop to identify and validate digital systems. This country profile provides an overview of current digital immunization systems used in Malawi and outlines priorities so that Malawi—led by the direction of the MOH and its existing governance mechanisms and supported by other key stakeholders—can use the findings to inform its journey to develop and operationalize interoperable digital systems that support immunization from end to end.
This country profile outlines ten key digital systems currently supporting aspects of immunization and their major functional features, existing challenges, and recommendations to strengthen each one based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Classification of digital interventions, services and applications in health, 2nd ed. The systems profiled in this report include the Malawi Healthcare Information System (MaHIS), Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) and National Registration and Identification System (NRIS), Demographics Data Exchange (DDE), District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), Integrated Community Health Information System (iCHIS), One Health Surveillance Platform (OHSP), Master Health Facility Registry (MHFR), Open Logistics Management Information System (OpenLMIS), Electronic Health Information Network (eHIN), and the Product Catalog Management Tool (PCMT).
Findings also highlight that although the MOH is experiencing rapid growth in the development and adoption of these mobile and web-based digital tools, a number of the existing systems are non-integrated and/or interoperable, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of accurate data.