Data Use Partnership
Over the last five years, the Data Use partnership has achieved many milestones in an effort to improve the national health care system through better use of health data.
The Data Use Partnership (DUP) is a government-led initiative that is improving the national health care system through better use of health information. Under DUP, the government of Tanzania is working with PATH to strengthen digital health and build local capacity so that everyone—from government officials to health workers to patients—can have better access to data and make more informed decisions, leading to a healthier Tanzania. The DUP initiative is laying the foundation for digital transformation by launching new digital health systems, establishing governance bodies, and introducing policy reform.
At all levels of Tanzania’s health system, people often do not have the right data to make informed decisions. This leads to uninformed decisions about patient care, a reactive approach to disease outbreaks, stockouts of essential medicines and supplies, and the misallocation of limited health budgets.
Building for Tanzania’s digital future
The DUP initiative is working at every level of the health system to unlock better health care for Tanzanians. In early 2016, the government of Tanzania, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and PATH, conducted a thorough landscape and gap analysis to identify the greatest opportunities to address key challenges impeding health system performance. Through this landscape and gap analysis, the government produced a Digital Health Investment Roadmap, which was updated in 2021 and consists of 17 strategic investment recommendations for using data to improve health services and outcomes. The DUP initiative is a direct response to this roadmap, working across four main areas to achieve digital transformation: 1)Strengthening digital governance and policy, 2) Building health worker capacity for the future, 3) Digitalizing primary health care, and 4) Coordinating the digital health ecosystem and investments .
Data Use Partnership Journey
See the timelineCase studies
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Developing digital solutions with the experts — end users
Learn how the Afya supportive supervision system is contributing to a culture of care
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Tanzania builds a blueprint for change
Tanzania pioneers a health sector enterprise architecture
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Tanzania commits to strengthening its health worker registry
An improved human resource for health information system facilitates better tracking
Digital Champions
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The impact of the DUP initiative
The Data Use Partnership (DUP) initiative demonstrates Tanzania’s commitment to building for scale, sustainability, and health impact by developing a holistic digital health ecosystem that considers the country’s health system, all of its parts, and how they work together. DUP is an example of an innovative new model of partnership that places the government—instead of donors and implementing partners—squarely in the driver’s seat.
The DUP initiative is enabling accurate and accessible data to improve health outcomes. Better data:
- Supports high-quality service delivery: With access to real-time data, health workers and decision-makers have a truer picture of health trends, needs, and priorities. That means patients will get the care they need, health providers can determine where there are gaps in care, and policymakers can make smart decisions about health spending.
- Enhances health care support systems: DUP is also digitalizing health facility supervision tools and processes to allow for a coordinated and systematic approach to data-driven performance management. Digitalizing facility supervision will enable health workers and managers to take evidence-based actions to improve quality of care.
- Enables better data management and use: With access to better-quality data and decision-support tools, health workers are more empowered to act on the information available to them. Instead of relying on aggregate monthly reports, health workers can determine in real time if certain districts have lower health coverage than others, and they can arrange for more targeted outreach to low coverage areas.
An end-to-end digital health system means the government will be able to accurately allocate resources according to Tanzania’s true birth cohort, decision-makers will be able to anticipate disease outbreaks before they occur, and frontline health workers will be able to provide a continuum of care.