Background A strong health information system (HIS) is one of the essential building blocks for a resilient health system. The Ministry of Health (MOH) of Ethiopia is working on different initiatives to strengthen the national HIS. Among these is the Capacity-Building and Mentorship Partnership (CBMP) Programme in collaboration with public universities in Ethiopia since November 2017. This study aims to evaluate the outcomes and share experiences of the country in working with universities to strengthen the national HIS. Methods The study employed a mixed-methods approach that included 247 health organizations (health offices and facilities) of CBMP-implementing woredas (districts) and 23 key informant interviews. The programme focused on capacity-building and mentoring facilities and woreda health offices. The status of HIS was measured using a connected woreda checklist before and after the intervention. The checklist consists of items related to HIS infrastructure, data quality and administrative use. The organizations were classified as emerging, candidate or model based on the score. The findings were triangulated with qualitative data collected through key informant interviews. Results The results showed that the overall score of the HIS implementation was 46.3 before and 74.2 after implementation of the programme. The proportion of model organizations increased from 1.2% before to 31.8% after the programme implementation. The health system–university partnership has provided an opportunity for higher education institutions to understand the health system and tune their curricula to address real-world challenges. The partnership brought opportunities to conduct and produce local- and national-level evidence to improve the HIS. Weak ownership, poor responsiveness and poor perceptions of the programme were mentioned as major challenges in programme implementation. Conclusion The overall HIS has shown substantial progress in CBMP implementation woredas. A number of facilities became models in a short period of time after the implementation of the programme. The health system–university partnership was found to be a promising approach to improve the national HIS and to share the on-the-ground experiences with the university academicians. However, weak ownership and poor responsiveness to feedback were the major challenges identified as needing more attention in future programme implementation.

The Ethiopia government’s implementation of strategies to improve data quality, as outlined in its Information Revolution Roadmap, has led to higher data quality and improved data use, but barriers to optimal data-use practices must be addressed to create a culture of information use.

Background Strengthening the national health information system is one of Ethiopia’s priority transformation agendas. A well-trained and competent workforce is the essential ingredient to a strong health information system. However, this workforce has neither been quantified nor characterized well, and there is no roadmap of required human resources to enhance the national health information system. Objective We aimed to determine the current state of the health information system workforce and to forecast the human resources needed for the health information system by 2030. Methods We conducted a survey to estimate the current number of individuals employed in the health information system unit and the turnover rate. Document review and key-informant interviews were used to collect current human resources and available health information system position data from 110 institutions, including the Ministry of Health, federal agencies, regional health bureaus, zonal health departments, district health offices, and health facilities. The Delphi technique was used to forecast human resources required for the health information system in the next ten years: 3 rounds of workshops with experts from the Ministry of Health, universities, agencies, and regional health bureaus were held. In the first expert meeting, we set criteria, which was followed by expert suggestions and feedback. Results As of April 2020, there were 10,344 health information system professionals working in the governmental health system. Nearly 95% (20/21) of district health offices and 86.7% (26/30) of health centers reported that the current number of health information system positions was inadequate. In the period from June 2015 to June 2019, health information technicians had high turnover (48/244, 19.7%) at all levels of the health system. In the next ten years, we estimate that 50,656 health information system professionals will be needed to effectively implement the Ethiopia's national health information system. Conclusions Current health information system–related staffing levels were found to be inadequate. To meet the estimated need of 50,656 multidisciplinary health information system professionals by 2030, the Ministry of Health and regional health bureaus, in collaboration with partners and academic institutions, need to work on retaining existing and training additional health information system professionals.

Health information systems strengthening interventions, such as the capacity-building and mentorship program used, leverages the expertise of stakeholders from multiple disciplines and can help improve data quality and information use at health facilities.

Coverage for most maternal services showed promising performance. Improving the health information system performance can further improve maternal service uptake and quality.