Global HIV/AIDS

Health Information Systems

CDC is assisting countries in developing well-functioning health information systems. Such systems ensure the production, analysis, dissemination and use of reliable, timely information on health determinants, health system performance, and health status.

Recognizing that high-quality data are essential to HIV prevention, care, and treatment programs, CDC:

Supports efforts to improve national health information systems.
Helps to identify and promote the use of global standards in health information systems to ensure consistent indicators to enable sharing across systems, and to ensure that data are protected.
Promotes the use of quality data for decision-making through scientific and methodologically sound evaluations and assessments of health information systems.

Notable Accomplishments

CDC has supported the implementation of paper-based and computerized reporting systems for: pediatric and adult antiretroviral treatment (ART) patient monitoring, HIV surveillance, ART drug resistance monitoring, electronic medical records (EMR) systems, laboratory information systems, pharmacy systems, prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) and voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) program monitoring, national-level impact and program indicators, community-based systems, information and communications infrastructure (ICT), logistics and supply chain management systems, and human resource tracking.
In conjunction with WHO and UNAIDS, CDC has developed: standardized definitions for data that support ART, HIV/TB, maternal child health, PMTCT, and other clinical care; open source tools for the implementation of electronic patient record and other systems; security and confidentiality guidance for HIV/AIDS data; and guidance on unique identification and matching of patient records across disparate information systems.