OpenHIE Partner: Jembi Health Systems

Capabilities

Jembi has extensive experience in the field of interoperability, digital health and health system strengthening, with  over 10 years of experience working on collaborative projects and implementation with inter-sectoral and multi disciplinary groups of stakeholders from national governments, local and international organizations and consortia, academic and research institutions, non-profits  and private companies. Our partners include: the South African National and Provincial Departments of Health, the  South African Medical Research Council, the Mozambique Ministry of Health; Universities of Cape Town, Pretoria,  Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique) and Zimbabwe, Regenstrief Institute, Management Sciences for Health (MSH),  Praekelt Foundation, Ona Systems, BroadReach; Health Enabled; HISP-South Africa; Partners in Health and PLAN  International. 

In South Africa, Jembi is working with National and Provincial Departments of Health (NDOH and PDOH), non profits and private sector partners to improve interoperability of health information systems, including development of the the back end systems for the national scale MomConnect Initiative which provides  informational messaging for pregnant women and mothers using mobile phones. The system has to date registered more than 3 million mothers.  

Jembi is also part of the The AHIE consortium in South Africa, developed over the past three years in partnership  with UCT-CIDER and other organisations, supporting the development and national scale-up of the South African  unique health identifier (the Health Patient Registration System), developed and matured interoperability solutions  to promote timely integration of data from existing HIV clinical systems such as TIER.Net and laboratory  information systems, and supporting development of a consolidated data environment for all health data including  for HIV and TB services.

In Mozambique, Jembi partners with the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) and the national MoH to  strengthen local capacity in the HIS and eHealth, in partnerships that span the public, private and academic sectors,  through over 20 active projects, offices and a living lab in Maputo. 

Jembi also works regionally in countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Cameroon, South Sudan and  Lesotho providing technical assistance and contributing to improving healthcare services and health systems by  developing and implementing appropriate, custom-made HIS to address country needs. 

Jembi in OpenHIE & the Digital Health Community

Jembi’s Role in OpenHIE

Jembi’s desired role within the OpenHIE community is in providing technical contribution and thought leadership to the IOL/SHR, OHIN and OpenHIE Leads communities, contribution to overall OHIE architecture design and specification, development of open-source IOL and SHR reference technologies, and active participation in other communities such as the Health Financing towards UHC community and OpenHIE Academy community.

Jembi’s Contributions to OpenHIE

Jembi contributes a broad set of technical and operational skills across various communities in the OpenHIE  initiative, covering design, development, technical architecture, community management, and maintaining  reference technologies. 

Jembi’s work in interoperability and health information exchange began with presentation to the eHealth  workshops held by the Rockefeller in Bellagio during 2008 following by a knowledge building visit to Mohawk  College facilitated by Derek Ritz and a project to develop a prototype HIE from open source components that was  demonstrated at Medinfo 2010 in Cape Town. Thereafter, Jembi initiated the Health Informatics Public Private  Partnership project with InSTEDD, Regenstrief Institute and IntraHealth that funded the Rwanda Health Enterprise  Architecture project and development of the Rwanda Health Information Exchange, one of the first  implementations of the OpenHIE architecture..  

Jembi has developed several OpenHIE IOL and SHR reference technologies including the OpenHIM and OpenSHR, as  well as continued development of emerging tools such as Hearth and Instant OpenHIE, and the continued  advancement of the OpenHIM to ensure alignment with OpenHIE specifications. 

Jembi leads the IOL and SHR communities, the OpenHIE Implementers Network community, and works with the  architecture, devops and leadership communities to ensure the IOL and SHR communities are aligned and working  towards a common goal. 

Jembi works with the Health Financing towards UHC community to support documentation of workflows and  architecture and the integration of new tools like openIMIS into the OpenHIE architecture. Jembi works with the  OpenHIE Academy community to support the development of OpenHIE training curriculums and materials, and has  supported the coordination and planning of the OpenHIE Community Meetings and conducting the Hackonnect-a thons. 

Jembi has been a longstanding advocate for OpenHIE, and has represented, presented and provided training on  OpenHIE to several communities, organisations and groups over the years. Jembi also refers to OpenHIE wherever  possible in grant applications that have an interoperability or health information exchange requirement.