The Ugandan MoH selected Living Goods to lead the rollout of the electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS) in six districts of Oyam, Lira, Amuru, Koboko, Maracha and Nebbi. This decision aligns with the government’s commitment to bolster community health and enhance healthcare delivery through digital technology.

It builds on the pilot done by Living Goods and partners, led by the MoH’s Division of Health Information, as part of the Intelligent Community Health System (iCoHS) project funded by UNICEF and Rockefeller Foundation. Earlier this year, the government laid the groundwork for implementing community-level services by adopting its first Community Health Strategy and Health Information and Digital Health Strategy.

The government is now digitizing CHWs—known as Village Health Teams in Uganda— and scaling up eCHIS with funding from Global Fund, Rockefeller Foundation and UNICEF. This initiative aims to equip at least 2,450 CHWs in selected districts to implement various community health interventions.

By 2025, the government’s ambitious plan is to expand eCHIS to at least 30% of CHWs in 50 districts. This will promote standardization of care at the community level. To accomplish this, the MoH has chosen two platforms: Medic’s Community Health Toolkit and ONA’s OpenSRP. The government intends to aggregate data from these two platforms into a unified national-level system and dashboard.

Training of trainers at national and district levels started in October. CHW training also started and will last until December. Living Goods is subcontracting some deliverables to Medic and BRAC. Whilst Living Goods advised that all DESC elements (digital tools, training and medicines, supervision and compensation) are included during the eCHIS rollout, there are still no costed plans for this to be sustained.

There are also some gaps in the public supply chain system, and long-term funding is not guaranteed. The MoH is however already reviewing the Medicines Enabling Environment Policy and Living Goods and other partners have provided input to ensure, for the first time, that the community health supply chain is included.