Data Privacy is a challenge for any organization handling patient data. openIMIS, (Open Insurance Management Information Systems) an initiative to support health financing in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) and thus Universal Health Coverage like many other organizations needs to develop a robust approach to data privacy. DayOne along with the Swiss Tropical and Public Health (Swiss TPH) invited a number of guests from the local ecosystem as well as the Swiss Development Corporation and the German Development Corporation to provide input into how to build appropriate data privacy guidelines. This was also a chance to question the approaches made in Switzerland and Europe to data privacy by considering a greenfield implementation.
During the event a short background on openIMIS and the context was made before group discussions around a concrete case of Malini a Tanzanian girl receiving healthcare were initiated. The groups dealt with questions of what data should be kept private from whom, what data could be used to improve health outcomes, what could go wrong as more data was shared and how these doomsday scenarios could be avoided.
The output has informed ongoing discussions with implementing organisations in Tanzania, it also highlighted the need for flexibility in the development of features and solutions so that openIMIS can meet the needs of different contexts in each of the countries who implement it.
The presentation is below. To learn more about openIMIS you can go to the openIMIS webpage.
