FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
01
FEATURES
OpenSRP is short for “Open Smart Register Platform”. It is an open-source, mobile-first platform, built to enable data-driven decision making at all levels of the health system. OpenSRP is a FHIR native app designed to support the WHO Smart Guidelines. The goal of OpenSRP is to help promote the adoption of standards based care while providing interoperability with national-level information systems through FHIR.
It connects frontline health workers with their constituencies and the health system at large. It supports the health worker in prioritizing point-of-care tasks, tracking service delivery and greatly simplifies reporting from the field. It can work completely offline to accommodate low bandwidth constraints — in even the most remote locations on Earth.
Please email info@smartregister.org to tell us about your idea.
Reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health, childhood immunizations, nutrition, malaria and early childhood development.
We are actively working to support new health domains in OpenSRP including NCDs. However, given the adaptable nature of the platform, OpenSRP can be adapted to other use cases. Please email info@smartregister.org if you have a use case you would like to support.
OpenSRP is built to be a value-adding system to pre-existing health information tools that are widely used (e.g. OpenMRS and DHIS2). Due to the proliferation of multiple pilots and the lack of interoperability in the mHealth space, OpenSRP was built to be interoperable. OpenSRP creates a real-time feedback loop and enables data-driven decision making at all levels of the health system, from point-of-care to micro-planning, and national-level planning; subsequently leading to immediate service delivery improvements as well as long-term, systemic improvements.
02
Implementing OpenSRP
Short answer, no. OpenSRP is an enterprise-level software solution that is truly tailored and customized to the needs of the local population. Every implementation and context has unique challenges, and we believe OpenSRP should be tailored to address those challenges.
It depends. There are a variety of factors that would drive costs for implementing and maintaining OpenSRP. These costs depend on the scale (number of health workers, clinics) and scope (number of modules, features) of your intended OpenSRP implementation. The more new or custom modules and features you want to implement, the more costly the implementation. However, the larger the scale of the implementation, the lower the costs per health worker.
Yes – we would highly recommend that strategic buy-in, leadership and implementation support is obtained from your national or provincial ministry of health, to make any implementation of OpenSRP a success. We do however realise that getting full ministerial buy-in can take very long, and that does not prevent us from starting to adapt or prototype the tool, for testing and piloting in a small number of health facilities, with a small number of health workers.
It depends. The length of implementation depends on the scale (number of health workers, clinics), scope (number of health modules / features), and the amount of funding available. Past implementations have taken as little as a few months and as long as 2 years to get to the “go live” stage.
This will highly depend on the level of customization required. Questions we would ask to come up with a level of effort for customization include: “Are there new features that need to be built?” or “Is this simply a matter of changing the user interface – e.g. colours, language?” or “Is the health problem you would like to address, a health module that is already developed in the app?”. This would help us come up with “t-shirt sizing” of the level of effort required, to help customize OpenSRP for your specific project.
03
Vision and Values
The OpenSRP community envisions a future in which governments own an enterprise-grade, mobile-first solution that connects frontline health workers to the clients in their care, and to their national health system. We see a future in which:
Ministries of Health are better equipped with real time data — directly from the field — to make key health policy decisions and to gain buy-in across government and donor agencies.
Health workers servicing low-income and disadvantaged communities are empowered with digital tools that improve their ability and capacity to provide quality care.
Patients can receive continuous, end-to-end care that will truly meet their health needs – improving equitable health access, better health outcomes, and ultimately leading to decreased morbidity and mortality.
OpenSRP grew from the desire of a couple of passionate design and software engineering students to simplify and digitize how data collection could successfully be conducted from the field.
Since 2014, OpenSRP was the key focus of the THRIVE (Technologies for Health Registers, Information, and Vital Events) Study. THRIVE was a multi-country research study that focused on the adaptation, scaled deployment and impact assessment of the OpenSRP platform and associated technology innovations in 3 countries: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
OpenSRP is now being implemented beyond research purposes and rolled out at a much larger scale across multiple countries. The tool is currently deployed and is live in eleven countries with different implementing partners and stakeholders. Programs in another nine countries are in progress or planned for rollout from the end of 2019. The longest-running deployments to date are in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Zambia, where the tool enjoys great buy-in from Ministries of Health and local implementing partners.
As a Digital Global Good, OpenSRP is a tool that is globally applicable but locally adaptable in each unique country context. As a global community of collaborators, we subscribe to these common values:
(1) Human-centered and end user first. Improving the lives and work of all frontline health workers is at the heart of OpenSRP. The exact end user can however greatly differ from country to country. The tool can therefore be adapted to the exact end user — based on whether the healthcare worker is community- or facility-based; their level of education (i.e. regular worker, supervisor or registered nurse); as well as the health area in which they specialize (for example, maternal and child health; malaria prevention; NCDs). We always follow a human-centered design approach, where the ultimate end-users of the tool are involved in the process of prototyping, adapting, testing and deploying the solution in their country.
(2) Collaboration. Even though great strides have been made in recent years, in modularizing OpenSRP and making it easier to adapt and deploy the tool, the process still involves collaboration between Ministries of Health, donors, as well as implementation -, technology -, content – and support partners. Making healthcare truly accessible and equitable requires multi-stakeholder partnerships and the realization that no single entity can do this alone.
(3) Integration, not duplication. As a digital health tool, OpenSRP prides itself in the fact that it can easily integrate (and has successfully done so in various country implementations) with best-of-breed health information and patient record systems. Our preference is always to work with other Open Source tools, but we can and have also integrated OpenSRP with proprietary software tools. Our aim is never to re-invent the wheel or duplicate effort, but rather to integrate with what exists.
04
Partners
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, DFID, DIAL, D-tree International, GAVI, PATH, UNICEF, Jhpiego, Johnson & Johnson.
Ministries of health in all implementation countries, the World Health Organization, GAVI, DSME (Digital Solutions for Malaria Elimination) Consortium, Summit Institute of Development (SID) Indonesia, UNICEF.
Akros, D-tree International, Last Mile Health, Living Goods, Ministries of Health in all implementation countries, mPower Social Bangladesh, Summit Institute of Development (SID) Indonesia, UNICEF.
BlueCode Zambia, D-tree International, HISP, Interactive Health Solutions (IHS) Pakistan, iTech Kenya, Jembi Health Systems, Living Goods, mPower Social Bangladesh, Nearex, Simprints, University of Dar Es Salaam Computing Centre (UCC), VentureDive Pakistan.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Interactive Research and Development Pakistan, KEMRI, Summit Institute of Development (SID) – Indonesia, THRIVE Study Consortium Partners (including the WHO and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), DataKind.
05
Community
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been the lead health content partner for OpenSRP for many years. We have collaborated with WHO around their guidelines for antenatal care, immunizations and family planning and these are all integrated into OpenSRP’s workflows and decision logic. For example, the antenatal care (ANC) workflows and scheduled services for the health worker in OpenSRP are based on WHO’s latest ANC guidelines.
As part of the OpenSRP Global Goods work, we are setting up a formal OpenSRP Governance Body, that will consist of 2 committees: An Advisory / Steering Committee, and a Technical / Product Committee. These committees meet regularly in virtual meetings, and also physically from time-to-time. Please get in touch with us at info@smartregister.org if you would like to join the OpenSRP community.
OpenSRP is recognized by PATH and Digital Square as a Global Good. This means that the tool is recommended to country governments, donors and implementers as a tool that has been tested and adapted in various contexts, and can successfully support the work of frontline health workers as a critical component in moving countries to Universal Health Coverage.
Glad you asked! Start by emailing info@smartregister.org to connect with our group. You can ask to be added to the weekly tech calls and receive the recurring calendar invite to join those. You can also explore our Wiki, check out OpenSRP on Github, or join the OpenSRP Developer Mailing List.
The OpenSRP developer community meets weekly (virtually, on a Wednesday) to discuss and agree on priorities and features in the technical roadmap. Teams also give each other advice and help to trouble-shoot and find solutions to challenges. This meeting is steered by Ona and our OpenSRP technical leads and developers. Organizations that regularly join and contribute to the OpenSRP developer community include: BlueCode, D-tree International, HISP, Jembi Health Systems, Summit Institute for Development (SID) Indonesia, University of Dar Es Salaam Computing Centre, (UCC), mPower Social Bangladesh, Softmed, and VentureDive – amongst others.
