Data Visualization

The USAID Digital Strategy 2020-2024 alongside The Vision for Action in Digital Health outline USAID’s deliberate and holistic commitment to strengthen open, inclusive, and secure digital ecosystems in support of governments' initiatives to help people live freer, healthier, and more prosperous lives. Digital ecosystems encompass the collective stakeholders, systems, and enabling environments that empower people and communities to use digital technology to gain access to services, engage with each other, or pursue economic opportunities. These digital ecosystems are transforming how people access information, goods, services, and opportunities. 

The USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project works to improve global health outcomes by increasing access to high-quality health products worldwide. To this end, global health supply chains need to ensure the efficient flow of commodities, and equally as important, open access to information.

To make timely and accurate information available to stakeholders, it is imperative that key data elements are standardized and interoperability is promoted among all systems. The purpose of the National Product Catalog (NPC) tool is to help standardize commodity information through Global Standard (GS1) information. Likewise, the Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model (SCISMM) assesses the maturity of information systems and provides recommendations for strengthening the management information system to improve supply chain operation and data quality.

Management Information System Operation

The operationalization of our Management Information System (MIS) work is spearheaded by the GHSC-PSM Health System Strengthening (HSS) MIS team. The team provides guidance, coordination across stakeholders, and direct technical assistance to support supply chain information systems that allow for evidenced-based decision making, data-driven reporting and visualization, and interoperability across related systems. The team's approach to MIS development and support is based on industry best practices and sustainable solutions that best meet the context and needs of supported countries and their healthcare supply chains.

The HSS MIS team also orchestrates the MIS working group, which offers relevant guidance towards robust, sustainable, and digitally enabled country supply chains. The working group comes together to share in-country lessons learned in planning, implementing, and maintaining information systems for healthcare systems within the GHSC-PSM project.

Information sharing sessions have previously included:

  • eLMIS Software Provider Presentations
  • Country Field Office Presentations
  • COVID-19 Software Provider tools Presentations
National Product Catalog

The National Product Catalog (NPC) helps address challenges that low- and middle-income countries face, by facilitating the use of standardized product information in all supply chain operations. Standardized product information helps improve collaboration across supply chain entities, processes and systems thus providing end-to-end visibility of medical commodities. Standardized product information will also improve planning and help mitigate supply chain exceptions, such as stockouts, by eliminating duplicate and inaccurate representations of product data. The Product Catalog Management Tool (PCMT) is an online tool of the NPC that facilitates the adoption of standardized product information and effectively addressed this challenge.

For more information on the NPC, check out the following resources:

Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model

Digital sustainability depends on the access to information, the capacity and resiliency of physical networks run by skilled staff, and an enabling environment to dynamically re-balance as priorities shift with advancements in technology and changes in society. The Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model (SCISMM) is a tool to help countries evaluate the maturity of their information system, and prioritize investments in a strategic manner towards improved performance and sustainability.

USAID’s Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model is a tool to help countries evaluate their supply chain systems’ capabilities holistically, enabling informed decision-making. This is a key contributor in reducing costs, improving efficiency, and increasing the timely delivery and availability of high-quality health commodities to patients.

For more information on the SCISMM, check out the following resources:

Further Reading
Related Topics
Governance