OpenHIE Partner: Pan African Health Informatics Association (HELINA)

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  • Membership Status 2024-2026

Founded in 1993, HELINA has established itself as a leader in health informatics practice in Africa. HELINA, the Pan African Health Informatics Association is the African representative of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). HELINA is dedicated to advancing health and biomedical informatics and professionalising health informatics practice across the region. Its core mandate is to support African countries towards digital health transformation and its strategy focuses on catalysing and accelerating an effective standards-based health ecosystem in Africa. HELINA has established membership from 12+ member local health informatics associations across Africa.

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Capabilities

  • Capacity building and adaptive Technical Assistance to empower health professionals and institutions, and accelerate the adoption of innovative and sustainable digital interventions, services, and applications in health (DISAH).
  • Development of Knowledge products and Knowledge exchange platforms to generate evidence-based research and collate insights to drive meaningful uptake of Biomedical and Health Informatics including Digital Health.
  • Fostering partnerships through increasing membership to HELINA, nurturing collaboration and cross-learning by promoting regional convenings, and uniting both private and public stakeholders in Digital Health, to drive scalability, sustainability, and resilience.

HELINA's Role in OpenHIE

HELINA’s desired role in the OpenHIE and digital health community is to build a community of practice for policy makers and implementers to further the adoption and promotion of OpenHIE knowledge artefacts, and to create an open and collaborative platform to meet, engage and share best practices on how to more effectively contribute to the achievement of a country’s health priorities through digital health.

HELINA’s Contribution to the OpenHIE Community & Digital Health Community

HELINA envisions contributing to the OpenHIE and digital health community by supporting the development and uptake of health informatics standards in Africa. Embracing a standards based approach to digitization will facilitate the meaningful use of data as a public good.

HELINA has significantly impacted the digital health community through various initiatives and projects aimed at improving health informatics and health outcomes across Africa. We have organised numerous workshops, training programs, and scientific conferences to build the capacity of health professionals in digital health and health informatics. Collaborating with academic institutions, we have supported the development of curricula and training modules that equip students and professionals with the necessary skills in health informatics.

HELINA’s mission aligns with OpenHIE’s goal of improving health outcomes through interoperable health information exchange. By becoming an OpenHIE Partner Organization, HELINA commits to actively participating in the OpenHIE Community, sharing insights, and collaborating on initiatives that promote the use of open standards and interoperability in health information systems. Our shared vision of a connected, efficient, and sustainable health informatics ecosystem drives our efforts to support and uphold the values of the OpenHIE network.

Does HELINA Inspire You to Consider a Partnership?

Does the OpenHIE mission resonate with the goals of your organization? Let’s work together to combine resources, ideas, and networks to improve health outcomes for resource emerging areas!

Fill out our form to start on the road towards an official partnership with OpenHIE: