"By collecting more and better data on primary health care and using it to drive improvements, countries can take significant steps towards Universal Health Coverage".

Madam MyeongSeon Kim, the Manager of the KOICA CHPS-Plus project in the Upper East Region, said this at a mid-year performance review conference of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in Bolgatanga.

She said even though maintaining data quality was difficult, it was a necessary task that health providers had to consistently manage, to build trust and enable quicker and more knowledgeable decisions.

The Manager said regional and national data had to be used and shared to inform priority setting because governments, civil society actors and donors were increasingly recognizing the importance of using local data to set priorities and communicate findings and analyses to communities.

Madam Kim called for integrated systems of data to provide comprehensive view in order to move towards people-centered care,      "Promoting people-centered care means that decision-makers must be able to track patient progress across facilities over time in order to deliver care that is responsive to the unique needs of each person."

She said health facilities were increasingly equipped with mobile devices, health information systems and other tools that did not only collect health data, but targeted the right health workers with the right information for timely and effective action.   

Madam Kim noted that as part of global and national efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Ghana's maternal and newborn care action plan, KOICA was in partnership with the Government of Ghana, particularly the GHS to strengthen Primary Healthcare system through strengthened CHPS.

"As part of the project activities, medical and non-medical equipment were supplied to the 120 CHPS zones including 62 health centres and seven hospitals in the fourth quarter of 2018 and first quarter of 2019."

She commended the vision of the GHS to streamline the transactional data collection through the rollout of the E-tracker and said even though there may be technical challenges during the transition from manual to digital; digitization of data collection would reduce workload on nurses and ensure more accurate data collection.