A reliable, online, sustainable, and acceptable digital maternal and newborn health platform providing real-time data at all levels.
The problem
- Unavailable online digital health platform collecting real-time individual level, and weekly aggregated data on emergency diseases that have an impact on maternal and newborn health outcomes.
- The use of paper-based forms for tracking and reporting maternal and perinatal deaths reduces data efficiency and reliability for planning, decision making and research at all levels.
The solution
To have a sustainable The National Maternal and Newborn Surveillance Platform was established in Malawi to capture the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 on maternal and neonatal outcomes, maternal deaths, near-miss cases, and quality of care in Malawian hospitals. The following information is gathered through the system:
- COVID-19 cases
- Cholera cases
- Maternal near miss
- Maternal deaths
- Facility-level quality of care
The platform, which is built within the Ministry of Health’s existing reporting systems, has replaced hard copies of MDSR, MDA-1, and MDA-2 forms. The platform has been modified and is being updated to improve reporting and tracking of maternal and newborn health data for hospitals and the Ministry of Health on maternal and neonatal health outcomes and quality of care. Data is collected in real-time and displayed on a public online dashboard. For sustainability, the platform is currently being transitioned to the Malawi DHIS 2 tracker which is an open-source application used for supporting data collection and analysis of disaggregated data.
Impact
- Sustainable online digital platform used for tracking and reporting timely MNH data.
- Acceptable platform by MoH, stakeholders, and MNH partners.
- Improved data utilization for planning and decision-making.
- Reliable data used to improve maternal and newborn health at all levels for reporting MNH data.
- Sustainable platform with efficient data used for research at all levels in MoH, and collaborators.
