More and more countries are enacting policies to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and Universal Social Protection (USP) for their populations. Digitalizing their health financing systems is one way to reduce delays and increase efficiency and accountability, contributing significantly to the achievement of SDG targets 1.3 and 3.7.

Digitalization of systems allows for smoother interactions within and between the complex, data-intensive systems of both health and social protection systems. openIMIS is a versatile open-source software that helps scheme operators struggling with funding for such ICT systems by offering a free alternative for the digitalization and efficient management of health financing and social protection workflows.

This self-paced course on openIMIS will allow practitioners involved in national, regional or district processes on health financing to learn more on the rationale for the development of openIMIS, its features, but also on successful examples of implementation and the support available from the openIMIS community.

Equipping this target group with knowledge on openIMIS functionalities and making them aware of the advantages compared to other management information system (MIS) solutions creates an important group of mediators who can inform policy makers in ministries of health, social protection and related areas.

Course (learning) objectives:

After completion of all modules and the self-assessment, participants will be able to:

• Acquire knowledge on openIMIS and understand how openIMIS can contribute to countries‘ digital health ecosystems
• Showcase how openIMIS can support strategies to increase access to UHC and USP

The e-learning course is structured into four modules - each of them takes about one hour to complete, including answering in-build quizzes.

Learning objectives by module

Module 1: The basics

• Understand key health systems and financing terms
• Explain the functionalities of openIMIS, including the enrollment and claims processes
• Outline the boundaries of openIMIS (what it can and cannot do)

Module 2: openIMIS and national eHealth landscape

• Relate the position of openIMIS within a national eHealth landscape
• Summarize the interoperability of openIMIS with other systems
• Compare with other software such as DHIS2 & OpenMRS

Module 3: openIMIS use cases

• Explain the achievements of openIMIS in selected countries/regions
• Show diverse use cases (implementation scenarios) that openIMIS can serve: health insurance, employment injury insurance, cash transfer, in-kind transfer etc. 
• Compare the processes of implementation in the shown cases 

Module 4: Sustainability & the role of the openIMIS Community

• Discover how the openIMIS Community can support new implementation teams and how learning from local implementations benefit the global product and community
• Appraise the value of being part of the openIMIS community

Duration: 4 hours

This course was developed by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, for the openIMIS initiative and sponsored by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) under the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA).