Current Situation Assessment with Guiding Questions

To get a better understanding and overview of your currently implemented system, it’s necessary for us to get some information before starting SORMAS project. This information helps to improve our ability to solve problems that might arise later during the process. These questions we ask at the beginning can give us the necessary insight to anticipate and then address those concerns in a timely manner. 

Goal of this document is to understand the current surveillance and outbreak management situation in the country and the needs for a potential SORMAS configuration.  

We try to gather information in the following areas: 

• General organisation of the surveillance system including stakeholders 

• Infrastructure, current systems and human resources  

• Policies

Current situation 

1.  Stakeholders mapping 

A list of stakeholders is important before starting a SORMAS project because it helps us to plan a strong communication strategy. It also helps us in streamlining the approval process, helping to ensure that project resources are available and remain focused, and keeping information flowing. 

• Which organization is responsible for disease surveillance in your country? 

• Is there an FETP programme in your country? 

• Are there other relevant stakeholders in the area of disease surveillance and outbreak management? 

2. Health system infrastructure and organisation 

We need information about organizational hierarchy to implement the same hierarchy to SORMAS system. It will give us information of all levels of reporting which helps to decide the data access rights for each level.  

Please describe your health data reporting hierarchy or levels which are currently in place and fill out the table below. Feel free to add more levels or modify the existing ones if you define them in a different way. 

3.  Current digital tools and systems 

To have a clear implementation roadmap for SORMAS, please answer all the questions listed below and be descriptive as much as possible.  

• What existing digital tools are being used currently for health data reporting?  

• Is your system able to communicate with other systems? How? With which systems? 

• What are the challenges that you are facing with your current system? 

4.  IT infrastructure 

• Does your IT infrastructure run in a private cloud or do you have a 3rd party service like AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc?  

• Do you have in-house IT department who is responsible for managing, maintaining and updating the servers or it’s a 3^rd party company?  

• Who is responsible to solve your L1, L2 and L3 issues in your IT hierarchy?  

• Do you have IT support teams on each reporting or facility level to support SORMAS?  

• Do they have the skills or knowledge in Linux, Zulu OpenJDK(Java 11 JDK), docker containers, GitHub, PostgreSQL, Java, domain names, networking, Java, IT security, backups, and disaster recovery plans? 

5. Policy documents  

• Are there any digital strategy documents/policy documents in your country/region? (e.g. Digital Health strategy, Data protection guidelines) 

• Are there any additional specific rules that need to be considered for implementation in your country? 

SORMAS configuration 

1. Location

• Where would you like to deploy SORMAS (according to the table on section 1.2? 

1. Level 3 

2. Level 2 

3. Level 1 

4. Level 0 

5. Other (specify) 

• What is the population in this area? 

(Number) 

• How many health facilities would you like to cover with SORMAS? 

(Number) 

• How many users are expected to use the SORMAS system daily? 

(Number) 

• How many users will be using SORMAS in an offline mode with an android phone or tablet?  

(Number) 

2. Diseases 

• Which diseases would you like to add to SORMAS system? On Annex 1, please mark the column as per your needs. Please mention all data variables in the last column and if your required diseases do not exist in the list, then add them and highlight them.  

3. Identification of key SORMAS staff 

Identification of key SORMAS staff is important before implementing SORMAS because it helps to maximize the value of SORMAS and its sustainability. Proper training of staff is key to reaping the full benefits of SORMAS. It is important to properly prepare for the implementation process with your team and the SORMAS end users. 

• Identification of trainers 

• Admin 

• Focal points in each region 

• Identification of participants for the trainings 

Example: