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Health information system details 5 mark answer ref park textbook of community medicine

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I now have all the core content needed for a comprehensive 5-mark answer. Here is the full answer:

Health Information System (HIS)

Reference: Park's Textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine

Definition

A Health Information System (HIS) is defined as:
"A mechanism for the collection, processing, analysis and transmission of information required for organizing and operating health services, and also for research and training."
Health information is an integral part of the national health system and is a basic tool of management.

Data vs. Information vs. Intelligence

  • Data - discrete observations that carry little meaning alone
  • Information - data transformed by reducing, summarizing, and adjusting for variations (e.g., age/sex composition) to allow comparisons over time and place
  • Intelligence - information further integrated with experience, social and political values to guide decision-makers

Objective

The primary objective of HIS is to provide reliable, relevant, up-to-date, adequate, timely, and reasonably complete information for health managers at all levels (central, intermediate, and local), and to provide periodic data showing the general performance of health services.

Requirements of HIS (WHO Expert Committee)

A WHO Expert Committee identified the following requirements:
  1. The system should be population-based
  2. Should avoid unnecessary agglomeration of data
  3. Should be problem-oriented
  4. Should employ functional and operational terms (e.g., episodes of illness, treatment regimens)
  5. Should express information briefly and imaginatively (tables, charts, percentages)
  6. Should make provision for feedback of data

Components of HIS

A comprehensive HIS requires information and indicators on:
  1. Demography and vital events
  2. Environmental health statistics
  3. Health status - mortality, morbidity, disability, and quality of life
  4. Health resources - facilities, beds, manpower
  5. Utilization and non-utilization of health services - attendance, admissions, waiting lists
  6. Indices of outcome of medical care
  7. Financial statistics - cost and expenditure related to the objective

Sources of Health Information

The lifeblood of HIS is routine health statistics. Sources include:
  1. Census - provides demographic, social, and economic data; conducted every 10 years in India (last in 2011); provides baseline for computing vital rates
  2. Registration of vital events - continuous record of births, deaths, marriages, divorces; the precursor of health statistics; foundation of vital statistics
  3. Notification of diseases - compulsory reporting of communicable diseases
  4. Hospital/institutional records - morbidity data from OPD registers, case records, discharge summaries
  5. Health surveys - provide morbidity and service utilization data not captured by routine systems
  6. Lay reporting - collection and transmission of information by non-professional health workers; useful in areas with limited formal infrastructure

Uses of Health Information

  1. To measure the health status of the people and quantify their health problems
  2. For local, national, and international comparisons of health status
  3. For planning, administration, and effective management of health services
  4. For assessing effectiveness and efficiency of health services
  5. For assessing attitudes and satisfaction of beneficiaries
  6. For research into particular health and disease problems
- Park's Textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine, pp. 943-944
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