Speakers - 2026

Title: A DHIS2 Tracker for Neonatal Inpatient Care in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya is developing a DHIS2 Tracker module for neonatal inpatient care within the national Kenya Health Information System KHIS to enable patientlevel data capture in hospitals Neonatal mortality remains a major public health challenge accounting for nearly half of all underfive deaths many of which occur during the first days of life in hospital settings Despite this neonatal inpatient data are largely paperbased fragmented and poorly integrated into national digital health systems

The Clinical Information Network CINa collaboration between the KEMRIWellcome Trust Research Programme KWTRP Ministry of Health MoH Kenya Paediatric Association NEST360 the University of Nairobi and othershas demonstrated that structured clinical data can improve documentation quality clinical audit and feedback and care practices However while KHIS supports aggregate reporting it lacks a dedicated module for tracking individual neonatal inpatient care and outcomes

To address this gap the CIN collaboration under the stewardship of the MoH is developing a neonatal inpatient DHIS2 Tracker module aligned with the national MoH inpatient form MOH 378 and World Health Organization standards Through a participatory codesign process 204 neonatal inpatient data elements and 47 core indicators were identified harmonized and digitized

The solution leverages standard DHIS2 Tracker functionality harmonized metadata and web APIs with planned interoperability through the national health information exchange using open standards under the Digital Health Agency The module supports near realtime data capture to improve data quality clinical audits and routine reporting User acceptance testing conducted in September 2025 validated workflows validation rules analytics and rolebased access control confirming readiness for piloting

The pilot scheduled for FebruaryApril 2026 in selected highvolume CIN and nonCIN hospitals will assess feasibility usability and data quality Findings will inform a costed roadmap for phased national scaleup and generate lessons for extending KHIS Tracker to hospitalbased neonatal inpatient care within a nationally owned health information system

Keywords
DHIS2 Tracker Neonatal inpatient care Patientlevel data Digital health policy Health information systems Data quality Interoperability Kenya