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In the Uganda Health Information and Digital Health Strategic Plan 2020/21 – 2024/25, under strategic objective 3, strategy 3.3 the Ministry of Health aims to institute digital tools in the health sector that are interoperable and support the exchange of data/information in a coherent, secure and consistent manner. The strategic plan emphasises the need to implement core digital health registries to facilitate common naming standards including health facility registry, health client registry, health product registry and health worker registry that will enable health information exchange for Uganda.

National Health Client Registry (NHCR)

The identity of an individual who receives health services is crucial to enabling health care record sharing across institutions and systems. Yet, sharing health care records can be a challenge in a complex environment where there are multiple systems across multiple health care institutions and each institution and/or system has a different way to identify their clients. Even in environments where citizens are assigned national identification cards, there is a need to ensure the unique identity of an individual among the myriad fragmented information systems that collectively represent a person’s electronic health record. The Client Registry is designed to assist in uniquely identifying individuals who receive health care services by:

  • Maintaining a central registry of all patients and their demographics and assigning a unique identifier to each patient.

  • Linking patient registration entries that result due to changes in patient demographics (e.g., patient moved to another location)

  • Enabling health care workers to identify facilities at which a patient has received care.

National Health Facility Registry (NHFR)

The purpose of a health facility registry is to act as the central authority to collect, store, and distribute an up to date and standardized set of facility data. The resulting standardized and current facility dataset stored in the registry is called the Master Facility List (MFL). While these concepts are closely related, a facility registry can be understood as the technology that manages and shares facility data and an MFL is the standardized data stored in the tool.

National Health Worker Registry (NHWR)

The Health Worker Registry serves as the central authority for maintaining the unique identities of health workers within a country. The Health Worker Registry is a database containing a minimum dataset of details of all health workers working in both the public and private sectors. With multiple and disparate sources of data on health workers, it is a complex task to pull together and maintain a master and canonical list of all health workers in a country. The health worker registry seeks to reduce the complexity of this task by:

  • Pulling the minimum dataset of health workforce information from the various source data systems.

  • Merging the source data systems into an authoritative registry of health workers according to a data governance policy.

  • Allowing queries of health worker information by client systems.

National Health Product Registry (NHPR)

The Health Worker Registry serves as the central authority for maintaining the unique identities of health workers within a country. The Health Worker Registry is a database containing a minimum dataset of details of all health workers working in both the public and private sectors. With multiple and disparate sources of data on health workers, it is a complex task to pull together and maintain a master and canonical list of all health workers in a country. The health worker registry seeks to reduce the complexity of this task by:

  • Pulling the minimum dataset of health workforce information from the various source data systems.

  • Merging the source data systems into an authoritative registry of health workers according to a data governance policy.

  • Allowing queries of health worker information by client systems.