09–Strengthening Information Systems and Linkages to Care

09 – Strengthening Information Systems and Linkages to Care

09 – Strengthening Information Systems and Linkages to Care

2.3 Reporting systems

Reports help users at different levels of TB programmes understand how the programme is progressing based on key indicators or metrics. Reports designed for different users will vary in the level of granularity needed. For example, reports designed for an NTP manager would ideally be high-level reports on key indicators for the country and perhaps for individual provinces. Reports for lower level managers in the health system generally require more detail. For example, district TB officers may want to see performance metrics for all of the towns in their district and may be interested in operational details that would be too much information for the NTP manager.

Quarterly reports

It may be most efficient to automate reports that are needed at a set frequency (e.g. quarterly) such that, for example, the Q1 report is auto-generated and available to view on April 1. (It is worth noting that treatment outcomes for the same quarter may only be available in the next one.) For systems in which data are entered offline or retrospectively, however, it is advisable to allow time for users to upload any data not yet entered into the system.

Table 1. Report needs by user type

User Type*

User’s Typical Role

General Reporting Need
Field Personnel** Community or facility-based TB screeners, lab technicians, GPs See own performance, perhaps on a mobile device or website
Field Supervisors Managing a group of field personnel or lab staff See performance of field personnel under their supervision. Programmes may choose for supervisors to have limited visibility on data from other teams.
District Health Officers Managing the programme within the district; responsible for meeting screening and/or treatment targets and timelines; reporting to provincial level See programme performance/indicators for district at a granular level of detail. May need to see high-level data from other districts. Would benefit from the use of charts and graphs
Provincial Health Department Managing the programme within the province; responsible for meeting screening and/or treatment targets and timelines; reporting to national level See performance/indicators for province at high level by default, with the ability to drill down to district level as needed. May need the ability to see high-level data from other provinces. Would benefit from the use of charts and graphs
NTP Manager Managing country programme; reporting to health ministry See performance/indicators for the country at a high level by default, with the ability to drill down to province or district level as needed. Would benefit from the use of charts and graphs
M&E Team Responsible for tracking project performance and indicators, quality checks, etc. See detailed reports on performance and indicators for all geographical levels

 

* Note that all types of users may not be present for all types of systems. This table is meant to be illustrative as opposed to prescriptive

** This could be an individual GP in a case notification context

Day-to-day management

Reports for day-to-day management should be available on-demand, with users provided with a visual interface that they can use to generate reports, filter reports based on criteria such as date and location, and sort data as needed. As with other aspects of system development and design, report development is also an iterative process. More or different reports may be needed as programme staff learn more about their own programmes and identify new variables that could be important for assessing programme performance. Similarly, changes to protocol or new developments in TB control can necessitate modifications in the way data are presented. In time, the system can even provide recommendations automatically based on certain thresholds.

Privacy constraints

Regardless of whether a report is automated or generated on-demand, it is important that reports show data in an easily consumable way, but also with appropriate “privacy filters” and patient identifiers so that individual patients cannot be identified when moving to the consolidation and analysis of data. (Issues related to UPIs are explored in more detail in Section 3.2. of this field guide.) This is best done using dashboards with charts and graphs, as well as giving the option to download data in Excel, CSV or other formats for deeper analysis. Business intelligence tools, such as Pentaho, Microsoft BI and Tableau, among others, are often used to create powerful reporting and analytics dashboards. Dashboards can also be used to display geographical data, as described later in Section 3.

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