Dili: The Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, today launched Timor-Leste’s digital initiative – the state-of-the-art Integrated Case-Based Electronic Surveillance System for Tuberculosis, HIV, and Malaria. Built on the District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), this platform will gradually replace traditional paper-based data recording systems, ensuring greater efficiency and accuracy in healthcare.
“This digital initiative will allow healthcare workers to focus more on direct patient care and interventions, and reduce their administrative burdens,” said Dr. Arvind Mathur, WHO Representative to Timor-Leste, emphasizing that the Integrated Case-Based Electronic Surveillance System marks a transformative step toward more effective, data-driven healthcare.
The interactive dashboard provides visually intuitive analytics for Tuberculosis, HIV, and Malaria. Real-time reporting for Tuberculosis has now been strengthened, enabling the Ministry of Health to minutely track patients, including their exact residential locations, facilitating proactive contact tracing, monitoring, and follow-ups, thereby improving disease management.
For HIV, the system maps key population groups, including female sex workers (FSWs), men who have sex with men (MSM), and transgender persons (TG), facilitating the initiation of targeted interventions.
In the case of Malaria, the platform can pinpoint the exact location of a patient's residence, enabling health workers to execute targeted activities such as case finding and interventions against mosquito breeding.
An additional feature of the system is a user-friendly mobile application, equipped with both online and offline services, to serve as the case-based data collection tool, particularly crucial in areas with inconsistent network connectivity.
The surveillance for each of the diseases- TB, HIV and Malaria- is individually tailored, with separate user access on one integrated platform. Flexible data aggregation will allow for adjustments according to user requirements and hierarchical needs, facilitating comprehensive analysis at the grassroots level.
Identifying highly vulnerable areas and populations through mapped data will allow for targeted interventions where they are most needed. The aggregated data can be seamlessly integrated into the national Health Management Information System – Timor-Leste Health Information System (TLHIS), aligning with monitoring and evaluation frameworks.
To effectively use the digital system, health program officials will undergo a series of training sessions in the coming days, covering various aspects of electronic surveillance, including case detection and confirmation, data reporting, analysis and interpretation, and outbreak response, among others.