National Health Information System (NHIS )

It is important to clearly define the NHIS for Suriname, as there are many theories and ideas outlining the development of a NHIS, creating confusion when the term NHIS is used.
NHIS can range from large databases of extensive patient health information or management information at the national level, to organized systems of information flow in the form of reporting and feedback.
The Suriname NHIS is defined as: a set of components, procedures and mechanisms for acquiring, analyzing, and translating pertinent and reliable data into information to support health system management at all levels.

In positioning the NHIS unit, it can be considered a vital support unit for policy making at the MOH. This unit is of particular importance to the implementation of the multi-annual Health Sector Plan (SPG) and the Health Sector Reform process, by providing up to date information regarding health care financing and performance of the entire health sector. In the SPG, the NHIS is included in the 5th strategy “Strengthening of the support systems”. The 3rd operational objective of this strategy emphasizes the use of vital information by MOH and suppliers to support monitoring & evaluation, planning, management and policy. This vital information should be provided by the NHIS unit. Timely availability of sound data is of critical importance to all strategies in the SPG.
It also serves the overall improvement of the health system. A successful NHIS and health system management depends on a committed effort of all stakeholders to improve the quality and flow of information to support planning and decision making.

An outline of the NHIS highly depends on the structure of the health system. Suriname has a decentralized system, with three main levels (central, intermediate and local), and organized by level of responsibility at the health service level:

• Health system management coordination is done by the MOH (central level)
• Public Health coordination is done by the BOG (intermediate level)
• Health service coordination should be done by the RGD and MM (local level)

These three levels are the key stakeholders in the NHIS. They have their own information systems such as epidemiological surveillance, routine health service reporting, special program reporting, administrative information systems and vital registration. These information systems can be considered as subsystems of the NHIS.
The NHIS unit has to provide timely, relevant, accurate and complete data for the management of health programs and services. The unit is responsible for data collection, aggregation, analysis and distribution of health information at the national level. It also has a monitoring and feedback function to the data sources.  The key characteristics of the NHIS are that it should be functional, reliable, relevant, affordable, manageable and sustainable at all levels of the health system. 

Further development of the Suriname NHIS will be based on the Framework and Standards for the development of the Country Health Information system recommended by the Health Metrics Network.