National Health Management Information System

The challenge

The Gambia's Ministry of Health relied on paper-based data collection across hundreds of health facilities. Monthly reports were compiled manually, posted or hand-delivered to regional offices, then aggregated again at the national level. Data arrived weeks late, errors were common, and there was no way to identify emerging patterns in time to act on them.

The Ministry needed a digital system that could handle the realities of the country's infrastructure: limited connectivity in rural areas, varying levels of computer literacy among health workers, and the need for data to flow reliably from facility to district to region to national level.

What we built

• Multi-level dashboards — facility, district, regional, and national views, each showing the data relevant to that level's decision-making
• Offline-capable mobile app — health workers collect data on mobile devices that sync when connectivity becomes available
• Standardised indicator framework — consistent data collection across all facilities using WHO-aligned health indicators
• Automated compliance tracking — identifies facilities that haven't submitted reports and escalates through the reporting chain
• Role-based access control — each user sees only the data and actions appropriate to their role and geographic jurisdiction

Outcomes

The system went live in 2023 and is now the primary health data platform for the country.

How we worked

The project started with a Discovery Sprint — spending time with health workers, district officers, and Ministry staff to understand the existing paper workflows before designing anything. This let us build a system that matched real working practices rather than imposing an idealised process.

We delivered in phases, starting with the web-based reporting platform and adding the mobile data collection app once the core system was stable. Each phase included interactive prototypes that stakeholders reviewed before development began.

The system is maintained and supported by our team in The Gambia, with technical oversight from the UK. This means the Ministry has local support they can reach directly.

Technology