Data Officer

Following the Ebola outbreak of 2014, with its resultant toll on health and the economy amongst, the Liberian Health Sector developed the “Investment plan for building a Resilient Health System for Liberia” as a means of addressing gaps within the health sector as well as strengthening epidemic preparedness, surveillance and response. A component of the plan emphasized the expansion of the established surveillance, early warning, and response system to ensure prompt case detection and response to future public health events.

The Ministry of Health, National Public Health Institute of Liberia, and partners, having reviewed numerous literature and examples, settled for the Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (eIDSR) as the electronic platform for instant notification of priority health conditions. With support primarily from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the system was developed and piloted in two counties in Liberia. An evaluation of the pilot funded by WHO was very positive and rated the system highly for sustainability, cost, ease of use, adaptability, average time (2 minutes) it took to send out a notification, maintenance, etc.

This eIDSR utilized the existing mHero (two-way messaging system) processes combined with a custom offline application that synchronized with DHIS2 Tracker to provide alerts from the facility to the district, county, and central levels, and also provided a mechanism for creating a line list at the district level that is available in near real-time at the county and central levels. It leveraged the existing DHIS2 software that is currently being used for health management information systems (HMIS). In addition, the SMS component leveraged the existing mHero platform that uses RapidPro, drawing health worker contact information through the Health Worker Registry from iHRIS, the Human Resource Information System (HRIS), and facility information from DHIS2, which plays the role of a health facility registry.

With funding from partners, the Ministry of Health, National Public Health Institute, and Ministry of Agriculture are opting to expand on the above-mentioned system, to integrate other sub systems, including the Community Event-Based Surveillance (CEBS) and Animal Health Surveillance Systems based on the “One Health” Concept.

The technological innovation for CEBS specifically involves reporting “alerts” of infectious disease information and transferred into the collection of data collection, reporting, and overall data management system engaged between the community (by Community Health Assistants (CHAs) and Community Health Volunteers (CHVs)) and the health facility (by Community Health System Supervisor (CHSS) and/or Health Facility Surveillance Focal Person (HFSFP)) that capitalizes on mobile device technology such as phones as the medium, improving the timeliness and effectiveness of the reports when triggers are identified by the CHAs and CHVs in the community.

Similarly, the Animal Health Surveillance involves data collection from the community level with the Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs) through the County Animal Health Workers (Surveillance officers, Quarantine, Livestock, etc.) through the district, county, and to the national level (Central Veterinary Epidemiology unit and Central Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory). For verification of alerts, county animal health officers move on the site to complete the investigation.

The expanded eIDSR is expected to improve epidemiological surveillance, including alerts or triggers and case/event reporting and data management at all levels of the health system, through the use of appropriate technology for data collection, analysis and reporting.

Specific Objective:

• Knowledge of capturing disease “triggers” or “alerts” and IDSR
• Understanding of the interface between human and animal disease surveillance
• Employ enhanced technology to receive, analzye, and report real-time data from reports to include visualizations;
• Facilitate monitoring of disease trends over time and determining potential outbreaks in real-time, to guide at national and sub-national levels;
• Ensure accuracy and reliability of surveillance data to enhance timely response to outbreaks at sub-national levels
• Ensure the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the operations of disease and event surveillance information systems, linking cases (humans and animals) to laboratory results

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Work with eIDSR stakeholders to communicate and coordinate SOW, including updating the eIDSR dashboard of activities
• Work with the OH national and sub-national levels to coordinate the eIDSR work
• Demonstrate a clear understanding of data or eIDSR system and ensure high quality for accuracy, consistency, and comparability
• Call for and chair technical working group meetings related to the eIDSR and update the OH surveillance TWG
• Liaise with MoH Community Health Promotion team to ensure community health workers/ volunteers are receiving training, supportive supervision, and mentoring on reporting
• Liaise with MoA Surveillance team to ensure CAHWs are receiving training, mentoring, and supportive supervision on animal health reporting
• Monitor eIDSR various operationalization and progress are provided at quarterly updated feedback to the counties, districts, and health facilities
• Generate, monitor, and share information on OH surveillance through relevant advocacy forums/platforms and materials on surveillance in close collaboration with all partners
• Identify problems of data on health-related issues on dashboards development with the NPHIL team.
• Extensive knowledge of database synchronization (online/offline).
• Provide technical support to the eIDSR platform
• Perform any other duties that may be assigned by the supervisor(s).

Deliverables:

Year 1:

• Generate weekly reports on the process of data collection from the community
• Generate weekly reports on the OH approach to collect and feed data into the eIDSR system
• Report on meetings from the eIDSR TWGs and OH surveillance TWG
• Report on coordination and collaboration from eIDSR stakeholders
• Report on feedback from the sub-national level on the progress of eIDSR

Year 2:

• Generate weekly reports from the eIDSR DHIS2 platform for the National Weekly Early Warning Bulletin and monthly quarterly dashboards
• Ensure system connectivity of all servers, shared software, groupware, and other applications.
• Ensure compatibility and interoperability of in-house computing systems.
• Monitor and test system performance; prepare and deliver system performance statistics and reports.
• Provide orientation and training to end-users for all modified and new systems.