Equipping health managers to become data users

Tanzania's new capacity building consortium aims to equip the country’s health workforce for its changing digital landscape. Photo: PATH.

Digital and data tools present great potential to improve patient outcomes, but they are only effective if health workers know how to make the most of information. For health workers who have spent their entire careers using pen and paper to record patient data, new digital health systems require retraining and digital literacy skills.

Digital health systems are often introduced without regard for the capacity building and change management required to integrate them into existing processes and promote consistent use. What’s more, a strong health system must promote a culture of data use at every tier—from the highest rungs of the Minister of Health to the frontline health workers recording patient data. A persistent challenge for many digital solutions is that they begin and end with data collection. Beyond understanding the mechanics of a digital system, health actors have to understand how best to translate health data into better patient care.

Under the Data Use Partnership (DUP), the government of Tanzania and PATH developed the Capacity Building Consortium (CBC), representing the Tanzania Training Centre for International Health, Ifakara Health Institute, Mzumbe University, and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, among other academic bodies. Together, the CBC aims to equip the country’s health workforce for its changing digital landscape.

The CBC is growing health worker capacity through a multipronged approach. First, new trainings and innovative platforms are reaching health workers in even the most remote corners of Tanzania. Under the DUP initiative, an improved eLearning platform has been strengthened, synchronized, and scaled nationally to reach both current and incoming health workers. The platform replaces what used to be a patchwork of eLearning modules for different health areas that made for an incongruous learning experience. The updated platform standardizes learning and makes it easier track health worker credentials and school records.

To determine where there may be gaps or areas for improvement in coursework, the DUP initiative also evaluated the current curricula for its data use content. Finding that most curricula focused on data collection and not use, PATH and the government of Tanzania developed a data use toolkit to supplement trainings. The toolkit will be used by implementing partners, funders, and other digital health practitioners to teach data analytics skills.

The Capacity Building Consortium is a dynamic partnership reshaping how Tanzania’s health workforce is trained and prepared to meet the health challenges of tomorrow. As the past few years under COVID-19 have reinforced, health trends can quickly change and demand for global skillsets can shift.

The new eLearning platform will enable faster curriculum updates to keep pace with an evolving evidence base. It will also create a more inclusive learning experience—reaching students in the most remote corners of the country, who’d previously had to travel for trainings, while allowing for more personalized, self-paced content.

A data use toolkit will underpin health worker curricula with critical lesson planning on how health workers can apply newly accessible data to avoid medical stockouts, deliver more targeted care, and make more informed decisions about their community’s health needs. With more than 136 Tanzanian institutions offering certificates and diplomas in health and related fields, it’s critical that students graduate with a shared understanding, appreciation for, and skillset for data use. The CBC’s standardized curricula for data analytics training will help the health workforce operate from a place of common experience.

Maybe most importantly, the CBC represents a country-led initiative that delivers trainings, innovative new learning models, and educational tools by peers and experts within Tanzania’s health system, leading to more sustainable, long-term capacity building efforts.

Collectively, this work will create a culture and work environment in which health workers prioritize data—whether it is the Minister of Health allocating budgets or frontline health workers consulting electronic health records to determine if a patient has missed a recent vaccine. The CBC hopes to continue fostering learning exchanges and stronger academic programming to build a health workforce equipped for the new digital tools at their fingertips. By preparing a pipeline of future talent, the health workforce will be able to make optimal use of digital tools, ultimately leading to better patient care