Report on the WHO AFRO regional workshop on unique identification and application to HIV patient monitoring and case surveillance

Overview

In 2017 WHO launched the consolidated guidelines on person centred HIV patient monitoring and case surveillance. The 15 recommendations, included 5 cross cutting recommendations on data systems, including the promotion and use of unique identifiers to develop person-centred health information systems. Two important use cases for implementing unique identifiers in the WHO person centred monitoring guidelines were patient monitoring and case surveillance. 

When applied to patient monitoring and case surveillance, unique identifiers contribute to retaining individuals in prevention, treatment and care services, deduplicating testing and treatment data, improving linkage between services, assessing outcomes and impact while ensuring confidentiality and security of individual health information. In addition, the adoption of unique identifiers is an important step in the transition from paper to electronic patient information systems which many countries in the region are undergoing. 

Within this context WHO supported a workshop to bring together key countries in the region with the aim of building capacity in the adoption and implementation of unique identifiers and to support the development of country technical support plans. While the audience of the workshop was primarily HIV programme and data managers, the approaches to unique identification and possible solutions were cross-cutting across the health sector and the digital health plan.