 A very good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the pearl of the Indian Ocean. We are very happy to receive all of you here in Colombo Sri Lanka at the DHIS2 Asia Pacific Conference 2023. Over the next few days this year's conference aims to provide plenty of opportunities to discuss latest DHIS2 features and share knowledge and insights and build new partnerships and collaborations. And I'm so glad that this year we are joined by over 100 participants from various parts of the globe. On behalf of his Sri Lanka, I wish each of you a pleasant and a fruitful stay during your time in Sri Lanka. Keeping in line with the rich traditions of Sri Lanka and giving light to this event, let us now begin the lighting of the oil lamp. For this, I call upon the following dignitaries. Representing the Ministry of Health Sri Lanka, Dr. Palita Karunapurma, Director of Health Information. Vidya Jyoti, Professor Bajira Desanayika, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Colombo. Dr. Chamin the Veerabhadana, Consultant in Health Information. Dr. Kalshalya Kasturayarachi, Consultant, Community Physician, Family Health Bureau. Dr. Pandula Sripadana, Postgraduate Institute of Medicine. Representing Sri Lanka College of Health Informatics, the President, Dr. Prasadranathunga, the Secretary, Dr. Uditaparera. Representing the Ministry of Education Sri Lanka, Ms. Dakshina Kasturayarachi, Director of Data Management Unit. And Ms. Saumya Sena Ratna, Deputy Director of Data Management Unit. And Mr. Mahesh Parerra, Chief Executive Officer of Information and Communication Technology Agency in Sri Lanka. And representing all HISPs nodes of the Asian region. Mr. Sarablikar, Coordinator of the HISP Asia Hub. And Mr. Ola, Deputy Director of the HISP Center, University of Oslo, Norway. And Professor Yon Bra, University of Oslo, Norway. And last but not the least, Dr. Pamod Amarokon, Team Lead Sri Lanka. Yeah, I'm gonna try to do it. I don't know about talent, but what can I taste nice? What can I pour? What can I taste nice? Yeah, it's thin. Sweet, yes. What can I taste less, and not sweet? What did you say? I don't know. Yeah? I don't know. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you to our distinguished guests. I will take your seats. First and foremost to welcome our distinguished guests. I call upon on stage the Team Lead of HISP Sri Lanka, Dr. Pamod Amarokon over to you. Very good morning to all of you and I, Bowan. behalf of the organizing committee of Hisp Asia Hub, I would like to welcome all of you to this beautiful island of Sri Lanka, the pearl of the Indian Ocean. And also to the second edition of the DHS2 Asia Pacific Conference in Sri Lanka. I would also like to specially welcome all the invited guests who have been great patrons of digitalization process in Sri Lanka. This event was expected to be attended by the Honorable Health Minister and the State Minister of Health in Sri Lanka. But unfortunately, due to some urgent commitments at the parliament of Sri Lanka today morning, they informed that they are not able to make it, but they wanted to extend their best wishes for this event. And this venue, the Taj Samut Hotel Grand Crystal Ballroom, is a historic venue. The building itself is 200 years old, dating all the way back to the colonial times. And here in this event, we are really excited that we have a record breaking number of participants. So this year we have, as of now, 140 participants representing more than 25 countries, 25 as in 25 countries of ministries of health. And in addition, we have so many different partners who are supporting in DHS2 implementation. Especially in the Asia-Pacific region. So you see like flags of most of the countries here and the breakdown. So as expected, we have the most number of participants this year from the host country, which is Sri Lanka, followed by Pakistan and many other countries. By the way, this list does not include all our guests from the University of Oslo, who of course are coming from all over the world. I'm pretty sure that DHS2 platform is no news to the audience here, because most of you are experts in DHS2 and you are all gathered here to share their experiences, network and talk to everyone and kind of spread the news of what you are doing in all your countries. However, just to brief everyone of the DHS2 platform, it's of course is the largest health management information system platform, which is implemented in more than 100 countries globally. And it's not only present in the health domain, we have the representatives from the Ministry of Education of Sri Lanka here. So in Sri Lanka itself, we are using DHS2 in the education sector as well. And there are many other sectors DHS2 is being used. And that is why it's one of the most highly reputed, most scaled, digital public good in the entire world. So it is a generic platform and which makes it so easy for anyone to use, right? So it is not just the IT professionals or the developers or software programmers, it is anybody. We have trained field health staff, not even to enter data, but even to analyze and use the data that they have captured at field level. And with all this, it is now serving more than 2.4 billion people in the world. And the most important thing about DHS2 is what we promote as HISP, is the country ownership. We are just there to support and guide you, but it's up to the country to own their platform and to customize it as well as use the data as they wish. And we have extensive community around DHS2, which is led by the HISP network. So talking about the HISP, HISP network is pretty old. We have Professor Yonro here, who's the founder of DHS2. So it all started three decades ago and we have a really big legacy. And when it comes to HISP nodes, we have more than 22 nodes globally. And out of them, the nodes which are present in Asia Pacific region, which I listed here, and we will be talking more about different HISP nodes shortly. So all these nodes get together as a DHS2 or HISP Asia hub, right? So this HISP Asia hub does a lot of collaborative activities to implement DHS2, to support the countries and to kind of share the best practices which are regionally important. So what do you expect to see in the next three days? So it's a three days of conference and academy, meaning like it will not be just presentations. You will have hands-on sessions and you will have a lot of opportunities to share your experience. We are excited to hear that more than 15 countries will have dedicated sessions to share the experiences, challenges, and the best practices that they are using when implementing DHS2. And you will have a lot of opportunities to network with everyone in the region. So more than 110 participants is a very big number. So we really hope that you will make best use of your time. In addition to all these very academic-oriented activities, we have made sure that you will also have a lot of time to enjoy Sri Lanka and to socialize. So we will have a social dinner which is happening today and then we have arranged another city tour but more information about them a bit later, right? So this is a brief overview of what to expect in the next three days. But make sure you just socialize, network, and enjoy Sri Lanka. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir, for your words of welcome and insight. And I'm happy to see that Professor Vajradhisanayaka has joined us. Welcome, sir. Sri Lanka, as you all may know, boasts rich culture and tradition. And unsurprisingly, it spans to our entertainment sector as well. So for you to give a brief glance into our rich tradition and culture, we have arranged for you a cultural event and it will grace the stage now. Please welcome with a big round of applause. A very big round of applause once again, ladies and gentlemen, for that majestic performance. Thank you. May I now invite Dr. Palitha Karuna Perumar, Director of Health Informatics, Ministry of Sri Lanka, to speak a few words on behalf of the conference. Over to you, sir. Good morning to all of you. Hi, Boan. It's indeed a great pleasure to be here. And I thank you, Sri Lanka, for inviting, kindly extending the invitation to Ministry of Health for this very important conference. This is Don Brahm, his Asia coordinator, Mr. Swarab Desha, and all the his notes in different countries. And distinguished participants. This is yet another very important event in DHHS2 calendar. Is Sri Lanka been part of the Ministry of Health for the last few years? And are very instrumental in customizing, developing and deploying many applications within the Ministry of Health. So it is very a successful story for the DHHS2 implementation in Sri Lanka. So I suppose the whole idea behind this inception, Mr. John had with this DHHS2, I think it's realized to a great extent in Sri Lanka. I suppose it's the same in many other countries. Now, Ministry of Health is very much transforming the health sector in digital transformation. And even the government is now very much focused on digitalization of the many sectors, including health. And very recently, I think, Professor Bajra also the part of this team about this revitalization of health sector. And they have identified the digitalization as one key component of this revitalization of this strategy. So DHHS2 is as the open source software. And so it can actually provide very solid platform for many applications and many healthcare interventions. So we would very happy as a Ministry to embrace this and foster this process. And about few months back with the history Lanka, we again initiate the community of practice for DHHS2 and now it's very much fostering and new generation of health informaticians taking lead. So it's very happy to see that. And I suppose that's the way forward because we need the human capital to take this and move forward with this DHHS2. And especially now with our digital health blueprint is in place and many integration will require. And definitely I think one of the discussion will be here probably about how this DHHS2 can integrate with the bigger platforms, so with other systems. I know that Pramod is paying a very vital role in history Lanka's very vital role over the last few years. So thank you very much for this, Pramod. And with that note and I wish this conference will be a very successful one. And this will be able to take many lessons learned from other countries and share the experiences and probably we can take those resources at the end of the conference. Again, from the Ministry of Health, we wish a very successful conference and very successful participation and enjoy Sri Lanka. Thank you. Thank you, sir, for your kind words and we look forward to future collaborations with history Lanka. I would like to now call upon on stage Professor Vajradhisar Nayakar. He's the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. And he's also the Chairperson of the Specialty Board in Biomedical Informatics Postgraduate Institute, University of Colombo. Over to you, sir. Good morning, everyone. Professor Yondra of a long time friend, Dr. Halitha Karunampayama, the Director of Information of the Ministry of Health, leaders of his network, Sri Lanka, as well as all the Asian countries, other distinguished minorities, ladies and gentlemen. It's indeed a pleasure for me to talk to you this morning. My mind goes back to the year 2007. When I got an email from Sandeep Sahe, Yon's colleague at Oslo, telling us that Oslo is doing a lot of work in Africa and that they would like to come to Asia and they would like to work with Sri Lanka to begin with. I replied positively to that email and then soon after that, Sandeep, Yon and myself, we sat together and developed a funding proposal to know that we were successful in that funding application. And in 2008, we started, but was, and probably what is, the only, what is today, the only masters in biomedical informatics and the MD in health informatics program in the world, which leads to board certification of doctors as consultant health informaticians. That is the unique contribution that Oslo-Colombo collaboration has made to, I should say the world because the only other country in the world that you can, I think become a board certified consultant in health informatics for medics. On par with any other medical specialty in the world is USA, USA board certified doctors in clinical informatics, Sri Lanka board certified doctors in health informatics. And today we have one of the largest workforces. We have produced more than 300 masters graduates. We have produced more than 75 MD graduates, of them more than 20 now have gone on to become board certified consultants. They are all leading the digitalization efforts in Sri Lanka. We have the leadership of that, you know, the students, they were students, but our colleagues now was spearheading the stuff under the leadership of Dr. Palitha Karanma Prema. We have Dr. Prasad Ranathunga, who is now the president of the Sri Lanka College of Health Informatics, the professional college of all the health informaticians taking the lead. I think Dr. Chamindavirabhadran is taking over from him next year. So we've been able to create something unique. So that seed that was planted in Asia in 2007 yawn, I'm really happy to see has spread across Asia. So what we started in Colombo has spread across Asia. And for you to have brought the entire network here is wonderful. And I'd like to congratulate all of you for the wonderful work that you all are doing to strengthen health systems through digitalization. The importance of the DHIS2 work, which I know was yawn's PhD project. And what it has done, the transformation change that it has done to the world goes volume to show that the little seeds that you plant in academia has wider application across into practice and transcending boundaries and becoming global. Let me relate to you two or three examples of what I can tell you has transformed digitalization in Sri Lanka through DHIS2. The first example was what was called the electronic reproductive health information system ERHMIS2 maybe during the course of this week. The next three days, you may hear about it. We were able to digitalize and transform the entire maternal and child health information flow in this country on the DHIS2 platform. Within a period of six months, when we started this project in 2016, a completely manual based system was completely transformed into a digital system. And the only, I mean, this is a classic story of, you know, you're doing a countrywide system without any impact on the health budget because the platform is free. We have trained our health informations on customizing DHIS2, they were all government employees so you didn't have to pay them anything. They were doing their job. So you had a free platform, people who were trained who are deploying a customizing and deploying countrywide system. So today we have at any given time, more than 500,000 pregnant women. That's the entire cohort of pregnant women in the country. And more than 4 million children under five years followed up through that information flow. A system that was deployed without any investment as it were, obviously they had to be a little bit of investment on training and other things but not the huge, big investments that we look at. So that's one example of capacity development and its impact. The second example I want to highlight is that once you have a platform like that, you can innovate on the platform. So that's a platform which Pamod who spoke to you at the beginning champion as his master's project. We wanted to monitor all the malnourished children in the country and ensure that they are not malnourished. Again, a system was developed on the DHS2 platform. The entire backbone was DHS2. The innovation on top of that was a smartphone app which at that time cost us only about 10,000 US dollars to develop through getting the developers. The system was deployed and we were monitoring children in the community so much so that it's a GIS enabled. You could go, you could be from Columbus, look at a rural village down 200 kilometers away and say down a particular road in a particular house, there is a malnourished child and these child needs to be looked after. That kind of granularity we went down to. Which such little investment because we were innovating on the platform. In fact, in 2016 or 17, that innovation won the World Summit Award which you know is the award which is coming from the ITU and their initiatives and it was ranked the top innovation from applications coming from 178 countries in the world. So this is a kind of transformative change that the seed planted by Yon had brought about in Sri Lanka and I'm sure that is bringing about that kind of transformational change in your countries as well. So we owe a debt of gratitude as well as an appreciation for the work that Yon and his team has done. The final example that I wanted to tell you is the example of COVID in January 2020 as COVID was breaking. At Achala, Pomod, you know and Roshan, who is not here today and a few others came and said, so we have a problem, you know there's a global pandemic going to break out it wasn't declared a pandemic in January 2020 but the information systems to capture and report are not there. DHIS 2 is there in 70 odd countries. Let's customize DHIS 2 and get ready. Panduly is also here, he was also part of the team and we discussed with Sri Lankan company who was involved, WSO2 and we've got a fantastic open source company which does this work and the CEO just like hosted us in his office. I can remember by the time we were slowly coming to the lockdowns and nobody was there and one day in the evening five of us were in this room and these young people were sitting there and planning how to customize. So the original DHIS 2 COVID package was basically customization happened in a little room down one of these roads very close by here and you know the rest of the story. It got very soon when global. So I'm sure that all of you have inspiring stories like that, that you can relate, you can talk about. And that's the volume for the work that you are doing in your countries to strengthen healthcare as well as to ensure that your population remains healthy. The biggest challenge all of our countries are facing at the moment, whenever I go across the world, you know, in my roles in the Commonwealth as well as other Asian roles is health workforce migration. And that's especially affecting countries which are speaking English and using English as their working language. Sri Lanka is losing about 25% of its healthcare workforce, all categories within the next five years. That's a prediction, wearing another hat that I wear as the president of the Sri Lanka Medical Council. So we have no way other than digitalization to make these challenges. And we need to do it faster than ever before and we will need to do it in all our countries faster than ever before. And we will have to be able to also look at cost quarter sharing of data and expertise and other resources as well. So the network that has been built in Asia through DHS2 is a fantastic network and we should all work together, help each other and collaborate with each other. And I hope that the meeting that you are having in Colombo today is going to inspire all of you to grow this collaborative network further and to build sustained resilient health systems that can withstand all challenges. With those words, I'd like to thank the organizers for inviting me to come over and speak a few words this morning. I had three other invitations at the same time to speak. So I've been going from one to another. So please do excuse me, I came after one and I'll be leaving after this talk and to another similar event. But I hope that you will enjoy the hospitality of Sri Lanka as well as enjoy Colombo and go over to the Lotus Tower and see whether you can see your country from the top of Lotus Tower, which is the tallest tower in South Asia. And I hope you'll also come back in the future for similar meetings as well as bring your colleagues and friends and family and enjoy the hospitality of Sri Lanka. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir, for gracing us this occasion despite your busy schedule. Ladies and gentlemen, this actually concludes the inauguration ceremony of the DHIS2 Asia Pacific Conference 2023. We will now proceed with the formal agenda at the end of this short video. Have a pleasant stay in Sri Lanka. Thank you. As we all move forward, we don't forget to get plenty of sunshine and drink lots of water. Remember to really breathe, stretch, spend time with the people you love, find your balance, focus on the important things, rest, eat healthy, laugh a lot. So good, all of you. And remember, we are so strong, so resilient. So Sri Lanka. Good morning, everyone. So we'll start with the formal agenda now and we'll start with the round of introductions. So in interest of time, we'll carry out the introductions in a way that I'll call out the name of the ministries of health and the countries available here and the followed by the partner organizations. And I will request the representatives to please stand and I'll request the fellow participants to please acknowledge their presence and give them a warm welcome, okay? So we'll start with the ministries of health first. So I'll request the participants from Minister of Health Sri Lanka to please stand and for a warm welcome from all the participants. Minister of Health Sri Lanka. So we'll do, next we'll have Minister of Health Nepal. Thank you. Minister of Health Bangladesh. Minister of Health Pakistan. Minister of Health Indonesia. Minister of Health Vietnam. Minister of Health Tajikistan. Minister of Health Uzbekistan. Minister of Health Umanuatu. Minister of Health Solomon Islands. Minister of Health Maldives. Minister of Health East Timor. Minister of Health Bhutan. Minister of Health Lao. Minister of Health Kyrgyzstan. I think they're still on the way. Minister of Health Libya. Welcome sir. Minister of Health Egypt. Minister of Health Jordan. Minister of Health Ethiopia. So I'll request you to please stand so that everyone can see you. Thank you. And Minister of Health Yemen. So we welcome all the colleagues from the Minister of Health and thank you for your active participation and taking your time out for the conference. Now we'll start with the partner organizations. So all representatives from the World Health Organization, we request you to please stand up. WHO. FHI 360. Mercy Corps Pakistan. UNAIDS. Colleagues from UNICEF. UK SHA. I think they're still arriving. The Fred Hallows Foundation. App Associates. Health Protection Agency Maldives. Brak Bangladesh. Orbis International. Thank you everyone. So now I'll ask the team from University of Foslo to please stand and for the participants to acknowledge you. Now we have the HIST groups. So I'll request HIST Bangladesh team. HIST Indonesia. HIST India. HIST Sri Lanka. HIST Mina. HIST Vietnam. And HIST Pakistan. So thank you everyone. We'll have a lot of opportunities to meet and greet during the tea breaks and the lunch sessions. So we hope you all have a enjoyable stay over the next three days in Sri Lanka. Moving forward, we'll quickly review the agenda that we've planned for you for the next three days. So currently we are on the session for introductions and agenda review followed by a brief on the conference logistics by Dr. Pamod. We'll have a quick presentations as a welcome from the HIST Pesha Hub where you'll get to know more on the global HIST network and the regional and the collaboration between the University of Foslo and a brief update on the activities that the HIST Pesha Hub carried out during the last couple of years. Followed by the tea break, we'll have a quick session from Austin on what's new in DHIS2 to give you a flavor of the new and upcoming features in DHIS2. We have Phil who will be giving more insights on how the participants, the DHIS2 users, can report the bugs and a quick review on the DHIS2 roadmap and the future releases. We have country presentations. So we have scheduled slots for each country to present a brief on their HMIS implementations in country. So each day you'll have some country representative presenting the use cases to understand how the countries have implemented DHIS2, what have been their achievements, the challenges and the lessons that have been learned from their implementations. Then next we have some parallel sessions which are a mix of DHIS2 topics, both in terms of implementation guidance as well as the software development. So soon we'll also do a Mentimeter exercise where we'll take your interest in which sessions are more interested and we will ask you to send your responses as well. So we have system, a parallel session on governance and system evaluations where we look at the core principles behind creating and managing DHIS2 implementations and what are the available frameworks for system evaluations and knowing the maturity of the DHIS2 implementations in country. We'll have a parallel session on toolkit implementation. So the University of Foslo and WHO Geneva have been working for many years in developing these health program toolkits for different programs which many of the countries have already implemented. So we'll give an update on the latest developments in that area. This will be followed by a social event. Dr. Pomod will be sharing more details on that. So day two, we'll start with the LMIS session where Breno from the UIO team will give updates on the exciting work that is happening at the LMIS front and how DHIS2 is being positioned in that respective domain. And we also have Michael from the security team who will be discussing the risk and threats on our DHIS2 implementations and how the ministries and the organizations can mitigate those risks making your DHIS2 implementations more secure. We'll have another round of country presentations tomorrow where the countries will be presenting their experience. Then we'll have two parallel sessions, one for the LMIS where there will be hands-on session on data collection tools and dashboards. And we'll have another parallel session on security. So the participants can choose the topic of their choice and so we have the pistol ballroom as the main plenary session and we have one Gregory Hall downstairs which is the venue for the breakout sessions. So we'll inform everyone on the sessions where it is happening so that the participants can move accordingly. Then we have two parallel sessions, one on data quality. So we'll have a look at the DHIS2 data quality toolkit and some hands-on demonstrations on the data quality features. And we have one interesting session on one health and climate. This is a new domain where we're trying to see how DHIS2 can be influential in managing the data triangulation between the climate and health. So we'll having one parallel session on that as well. Day three, we start the plenary session with GIS maps. So we'll have a look at the latest features and developments that have happened in on the maps application and how it can be further extended to other GIS softwares working with DHIS2. Then we have another session on integration to understand the latest developments on the integration interoperability plan with the work being done at the University of foster care. We'll again have a round of country presentations to hear about the experiences of countries in DHIS2 implementations. Then after lunch, we have two parallel sessions, one on the maps, which will have more demonstrations and hands-on activities. And we have one more session on some additional programs for nutrition and the cause of death app that has been developed and how these applications work in integration with the DHIS2 implementations. And then on the final session would be to get final feedback from you on how the events were planned for the three days and what are the areas of improvement that we could suggest for us to improve for the next year's conference and we close the session with the closing remarks. So you have been emailed this agenda on emails. If you haven't received it, please let us know. We'll do the needful and share the agenda with you guys. So I'll request Dr. Pomod to please come and discuss the logistics. Thank you. Hello everyone. So as the host, it's my responsibility to brief about the logistics. So most importantly, the first thing is about food and refreshments. So we will be having two tea breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon and the lunch. So the tea breaks will be, the tea and coffee and some snacks will be served each day at 10, 30 in the morning and 3, 30 in the afternoon in the foyer area, just outside here. So that's where the tea is served. And the lunches of course will be arranged behind the main meeting area here at the same venue. So this will be around 12, 31. So it will be served there and you can come back and have the lunches here in the room. And also the washrooms we have at two locations. So we have up here onto your left the washrooms and we also have in case if the washrooms are crowded during the breaks, you can also use the washrooms which are on the floor below downstairs. We also have it and our team is happy to direct you in case if you have any issue finding them. And also for the conference, we are having two venues. The main venue will be here which is called Grand Crystal Ballroom. And the next hall for the breakout sessions will be the Gregory Hall which is downstairs. So we will have signboards directing you to find the Gregory Hall. And we will be taking a group photograph, the conference group photograph which we are planning to take at the tea break, the morning tea break today and it will be in the lawn area downstairs. So our team will direct you to the photo location. So you can have your tea at 10 30 and once it is done, our team will announce where to move and they will direct you. So we are planning to take the conference photo at around 10 45 roughly. So please make sure you are present. Otherwise it will be very difficult for us to kind of insert you later if you are not in the group photograph. Right. The next thing, as I mentioned in my initial presentation, it's not all about discussions, presentations and group work. We will have two social events. One is the dinner. So the gala dinner will be tonight at a different venue, which will be Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel. So we will be arranging transport for all of you to go there. So it will be starting roughly around 7 p.m. If there are any changes due to our plan today, the agenda and all, we will announce the exact time once we finish today. Right, that's the first social event and we don't finish there. We have arranged you a Columbus city tour. So the thing is you may have, if you have been here in Colombo last few days, you may have realized. Evenings in Colombo these days, we are expecting a lot of showers. So let's see how it's gonna work out tomorrow. But what we have arranged, we have arranged two buses, which has an open upper deck and of course a covered lower deck for you to go around the Colombo city. So we have arranged a couple of attractions. We are planning to go to one Buddhist temple nearby and then one very historic monument in Colombo called Independence Square. And if time permits, we are also planning to take you to the popular lotus tower. So that's the plan and this city tour will happen tomorrow evening around 5.30. That's what we are planning for now. But if there are any changes in time scheduling, we will let you know. And finally, I hope all of you may have received in the groups on your table, a link, a QR code to join the WhatsApp group. So we have a conference WhatsApp group for all the participants. So I request all of you, it's a high priority, please join the WhatsApp group because it'll be very difficult to follow all the announcements via email. I know you all are very busy and you may be having a couple of emails, email addresses. So we will not, we again will be not able to track or send emails to all your email addresses. So it's very easy for us to communicate if you can join the WhatsApp group. So the link and the QR code should be on your table now. So please join that. So that's it about the logistics, but if there are any changes, we'll be making announcements from time to time. Right. So that's all about the logistics from my side, but the one problem you may have if you are focusing on the agenda is like we are having couple of breakout sessions, right? So the main question most of you will be having is which one should I join, right? So you have enough time to make that decision and it's a bit of a challenge for us also. Like we have to figure out like what are the interests and maybe like if we know what your interests are, we can cater and tailor-made some of the content to suit the requirements. So to help with that, our team has organized, I mean, we are going to do a brief maintainer session, the poll. So may I kindly invite Shurajid Datta from his PYO team to please come forward and proceed with the poll. So while we are getting ready, may I kindly invite all of you to join the WhatsApp group? Yeah. So let's see, I think our team is monitoring how many have joined. Yeah. Okay, everyone. Yeah. So I'm Shurajid Datta from the, from Hyspa University of Oslo. And I'm just going to be helping a bit with some of the organization for the week. So if you do have any questions about some of this stuff, please feel free to ask me. If you could just please join this maintainer link, you can use your mobile device or you can access it via your computer. You can scan the QR code or you can enter the details manually. Okay, so we'll just give everyone a minute or so in order to join, all right? And just about while you're doing this, I'll just discuss a couple of other things. So regarding the new agenda that Sorab showed you earlier in the morning with all the links for all the sessions and then all the rooms, we're going to send that out in a little bit just once we finish this so we can assign the plenary or sorry, the parallel sessions for later on today. And then we'll also be in that same email sharing with you a Google Drive folder that will contain all of the materials for the week. Okay, so you can expect that around the tea break or just shortly after the tea break, okay? And we'll make sure that everyone's received that. And if you find midway through the day, you still can't access the materials, please feel free to contact myself or any of the organizers and we can assist you in accessing the materials, the agenda, et cetera. So if you want any of your colleagues to join remotely, for example, via the Zoom links, you can also do that, all right? And this is a self-paced poll so you can work through the questions a bit faster if you've already joined. But I'll just leave this up for a moment while everyone's joining. Just to give everyone another minute here, I can see some people, and you can answer the questions if you've already joined. We can see some responses already, right? Yes, yes, I will, no worries. But I see some people answering the questions already, that's great. So we'll be able to see the responses as after people have joined. Okay, so I understand some of you are not connected to the internet. So we'll give you a moment while we sort that out. I apologize for that. And just if you're not able to scan the code, you can enter this manually, okay? So you can go to the web address menti.com and enter the code that's at the bottom underneath, okay? So you can use either method, whatever works. If you can't scan the code because you're far in the back and it's not registering on your phone, you can just enter menti.com in your browser and enter the code manually as well, okay? But we'll just sort out the internet issue and then we'll kind of proceed from there. So I can see we have about half the audience in, 54 people. So I guess we're just waiting for the others. I think we're okay actually, yeah. Okay, so it looks like a lot of people have responded. We have over 80 responses for each question. So thank you very much for providing this feedback. We'll update the agenda and then we'll share that with you along with the materials folder, okay? So that way you'll know which room to go for the parallel sessions. Yeah, thank you. We have quite a few responses at this point. So I think we're okay. And we will share all the materials, the updated agenda, and you can also allow your colleagues to join via Zoom if you would like, okay? So I would please ask everyone to go back to their original seat and get settled again so we can continue with the session. And for that, I'll ask my colleague Sorab to come up once again. Okay, so please if everyone can go back, just settle down, okay? Because we'll start with the session again. Thank you very much for providing your feedback so we can organize ourselves for the remainder of the conference. Please everyone, if you could sit down and get back to your seat, really appreciate it. Yeah? You can take photos during the break, okay? No problem. We'll do that again. So good morning, everyone. I think we are ready to start again. So my name is Ola. I'm Deputy Director of the HIP Center at the University of Oslo. And Sorab and I, we will give you a brief background and some overview of the HIP network and the work we are doing. I think we already heard some great stories from the opening from Professor Vegeta about what's happened in Sri Lanka. And I think that's a very good example of how the HIP network operates. It was also mentioned that my colleague Jorn Bra he started this back in 1994, 30 years ago. And HIP is a global action research network initiated in South Africa as a collaboration between University of Oslo and University of Western Cape with the objective to strengthen health information systems. So the HIP Center, as we are called at the University of Oslo, we lead the details to a platform, software development. But that is not all we do. We also have a lot of activities around local innovation, capacity building and research. And this combined with software development I think has been really kind of the key to success of the details to and the HIP network. And I think we heard some really good examples from Sri Lanka, how those are combined with local capacity innovations and the platform to innovate on. So this work is financed and endorsed by many global health partners, including NORAD, the Norwegian Agency for Development that started with us back in 1994, the Global Fund, PEPFAR, GAVI, CDC, UNICEF, Gates Foundation, USAID and WHO are also partners and investing in the platform. So we are also a WHO Collaborating Center focusing on strengthening health information systems. As we heard from Pamoud in the morning, the HIP is now used across the world by ministries of health in 81 countries and there are more than 30 countries in Asia-Pacific and the MENA region using the platform. And you saw this map. I think what we can add here is that, and I think you heard it in the morning, the HIP has been used for our MNCH, for nutrition programs, for COVID surveillance, COVID vaccination. And you saw the topics here around logistics. There are many, many use cases the HIP supports also beyond the health sector. Here in Sri Lanka, it's also used by minister of education and many other countries do the same. It's also used in water and sanitation, in nutrition and more recently, also in climate. And we'll talk more about that this week. Austin, the tech lead for the digital to software development will give some updates on the new releases later today. But it's important that digital is too as a community-driven roadmap. So we developed new features all the time and release every year a new version of the adjuster. And that's based on your feedback. So we need your interaction. We need to hear from you what you would like to see on the platform, how you would like to improve it and then we'll do our best to be able to respond. That's how we operate. So this network, there are many regional HIP groups, many in the room today. And these are really critical in building sustainable systems in partnership with the governments. And these are regional and in-country experts providing capacity building, technical support and guidance on the adjust to implementations. And most importantly, they are a long-term partner to governments, to ministries of health and education, a trusted partner that stay beyond projects, beyond funding cycles. They are there sometimes for life. And that's important in reaching sustainability. There's also a lot of collaboration between HIP groups and local universities. I think we heard some really good examples here from Sri Lanka, the master's program. This is happening around the world in many countries. And the HIP groups also participate in the action research program that we coordinate from university also. And when local innovations happen in countries with HIP groups and the governments working together like we saw with COVID during Sri Lanka, these are shared across the network to all the groups and then implemented in all the countries around the world. The COVID innovation that was first implemented here was later than enhanced and used in more than 50 countries around the world during the pandemic. So there are 23 HIP groups in total in Africa, Asia and Latin America. You can see them all listed here with the Asian groups on top. And this is a network of partner that share a set of core values related to promoting open source software and local ownership, supporting sustainable systems, supporting integrated approaches and not fragmentation and fostering data use. And all the HIP groups sign an MOU with the University of Oslo where they commit to following these core values. And these groups are endorsed and funded by many local global partners like the Global Fund, Gavi, UNICEF, UNFBA, NORAD and the CDC. And by working with the governments and all these partners, HIP groups offer a coordinated way to support countries being able to align partner investments and initiatives for the better for the government and the details to implementations. So I'll hand it over to Sora to talk more about the HIP work in the Asia region. Thank you. Thanks, Ola. So I'll just give a quick background of the regional HIST hubs. The whole purpose behind setting up the HIST hubs was to create a new model for enhancing the DHS to country support. The initiative was led by Global Fund but slowly we have been presenting this hub model to many partners and we have some examples ahead where we see how the hub model was used for more coordinated DHS to technical assistance in different countries in the Asia region. So the setup is that three HIST groups serve as the home entity of the regional hubs. So we have three regional hubs in HIST group based in Central Africa, HIST group East and Southern Africa and then we have the Asia hub. So we have seven members presently in the HIST Asia hub. So using the hub model, we have been able to provide a more regional based approach for country coordination and working with the DHS to partners and investors in the Asia region. So we have HIST group India who's leading the HIST Asia hub followed and the members are HIST VETA, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and more recently we had HIST Indonesia and HIST Pakistan joined the HIST Asia hub last year and this year moving forward next year we have a new HIST group for Middle East and Southern Africa who will be joining the HIST Asia hub as a formal member. So the objectives and expectations behind the operations at HIST Asia hub is to create a formal network to support the HIST groups in the region both technically and administratively. The biggest advantage here is to promote the coordination and cooperation in between the HIST groups in activities related to information systems tendering at country and the regional level. We're able to build better collaboration with funding partners, giving them an opportunity to ease out the administrative procedures to have a joint contract with the HIST Asia hub and let the HIST groups work in different countries where the interventions are being planned. Through this HIST Asia hub model we have been able to build a shared expertise where we have combined resources from different HIST groups in both technical and implementation strengths and have been able to carry out the need assessments for HMIS and have influenced the design of HMIS work planning and budgeting in some countries and we want to do more moving forward. We, through this opportunity support by Global Fund we have had the opportunity to meet once a year all the HIST groups gather together. We had a similar internal annual meeting on Monday and Tuesday this week. So we have some details on that on what were the joint discussions. So at the beginning of the week we seven HIST groups in Asia we met and had the second HIST Asia annual meetup in Sri Lanka where we discussed all the updates of the past work done when we last met in December 2022. So each HIST group shared the updates of the achievements and the challenges that they faced in their implementations and what lessons were learned and how we can further improve the quality of the implementations in respective countries. We also had the opportunity to share local innovations done because each of the country in the region works in different dimensions and it requires local innovations on top of DHIS to make the implementations more sustainable. So we, his group shared the innovations that were done and how these innovations could be utilized by other HIST groups as well in their respective countries. We tried to discuss the common priorities across the countries which the HIST groups can address and can make better solutions for those. And we also identified some opportunities for joint collaboration and support to benefit the DHIS implementations in the countries that they're supporting. Just to give a quick progress update on the regional work that was carried out in last couple of years through the Global Fund Data SI project. So the HIST Asia have worked together with the HIST groups in the region to carry out DHIS to maturity assessment which is a framework for determining the maturity of the implementation and identifying the strength and the weaknesses in the implementations and how interventions can be planned accordingly. So these assessments were done in six countries, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal. Following the assessments, the DHIS technical assistance activities were planned which was supported by Global Fund financially and his group's work are completed and are some of the activities are still in progress which included building capacities of the DHIS to core teams. So academies were planned in country for building capacities of the minister of health colleagues. We carried out DHIS to metadata assessments to understand the quality of the metadata and the challenges which came on the assessment how these challenges can be resolved. Version upgrades. So we carried out version upgrades in selected countries to ensure that the countries stay as close as possible to the latest DHIS releases and can benefit from the features available in the DHIS to applications. We had implementation of HIV, TB and malaria packages for data collection as well as dashboards and we are also implementing the health facility profile toolkit as a pilot in couple of countries to collect semi-permanent data from health facilities related to their infrastructure, human resources, administration data, et cetera. We were able to build a successful partnership with the UNFPA Asia Pacific Regional Office to support seven countries in the region primarily focusing on the SRM and CH program. So under this initiative, seven countries underwent an HMIS assessment focused on SRM and CH practices which will allow PNG, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Timur, Maldives and Nepal and his groups work together in carrying out these assessments to the UNFPA country teams and the majority, the most important need that came out of the assessment was the idea to build capacity of the country on DHIS too. Therefore in 2023, the idea was to build capacity in these seven countries. So for this, we conducted three webinars for the UNFPA countries in the region on data use in DHIS to DHIS to data analytics features and data quality and use of DHIS to for data quality. So the recordings of these webinars are available so we can share these recordings with the participants so they can benefit out of the webinars that were conducted for the UNFPA team. In addition, we had an in-person workshop in Bangkok where UNFPA invited participants from the above six countries and which was supported by Shorajit, Hispindya and his Vietnam team in guiding them on management of the DHIS to implementations the governance and the strengthening the implementation plus teachers on data analytics and data quality toolkits as well. More recently we started working on an EMOC facility assessment toolkit where the health facilities which are providing EMOC and CMOC services they are being assessed based on the questionnaire that has been developed by UNFPA. So that toolkit is being developed at present and will be released as implementation toolkit with which other countries can utilize and modify to their context and collect data collection and the analytics for the EMOC assessments. So a pilot is very soon planned in Nepal for the EMOC facility assessment. So that was a quick update of the work that has been carried out in the respective countries in the Asia region. I think we are at the end of the first session here. So unless there are any questions for Ola and myself we can proceed for the tea break. So if there are any questions, please feel free to ask us. We will be happy to answer. So the tea is served outside. Please feel free to have the arrangements and we start again at 11. Thank you. Hello everyone. I'm back again regarding logistics. So we got to know like some of you who are not staying in this hotel are having issues connected to internet. So what you can do we will project the information very soon but you may follow the steps. So there is an open Wi-Fi network with the SSID called Taj Samudra. And also I must mention like all the in-house guests please use the Wi-Fi access that has been provided to you by the hotel when you checked in. Please use that it will work here as well. But for all the guests who do not have any internet access I'm just telling you the steps to connect to internet. So there is this Wi-Fi SSID called Taj Samudra. It's an open network. Please connect that. We will be displaying this information very soon. Just connect to that. And then once you connect you will be directed to a landing page in which you will have to select the option conferences and events. Okay. And once you do that there is a Wi-Fi code. So we'll be displaying the code shortly. You can use that code and then you will be connected to the conference Wi-Fi. Right. While our tech team is preparing that information to be displayed here what we are going to have next is unfortunately not the T. Before that we need to take the conference photograph. Otherwise it will be very difficult coordinating with everyone to the photo location. So what we want all of you to do in two minutes is to go down. Our team will be outside directing you to the location where we are going to take the group photograph. So please follow the directions from our group and then we'll all go down and take the group photograph. And once we come back up here the T and the snacks will be served in the foyer area just outside. Okay. I'm waiting for the team to display the, yeah. Right. Will it take long? So while they are doing it those of you who have connected to the Taj Samudra network the Wi-Fi access code is VIP 2023. Okay. It's going to be VIP. We all know very important people. Yeah. VIP 2023. I will repeat the code again. Wi-Fi access code which is VIP 2023. So those of you who are not in house guests please use that code to connect to internet. So the information how to connect the steps on how to connect to the internet will be displayed shortly. Right. So I think that's it for the inauguration ceremony and the morning session on day one. So I think we can all now go down to take the group photo. And once you are back the Wi-Fi access details will be displayed here. Right. Thank you so much. So Mr. Gishan from our team will lead you all. Yes. Gishan, yes. Please.