As low- and middle-income countries transition from paper to digital systems, family planning programs can benefit from unprecedented opportunities to improve services. Investments in digital health tools have expanded exponentially, but information on what works—and what does not— remains limited and scattered. As investments have increased, digital applications and data fragmentation have proliferated, but stakeholders are moving towards more coordinated efforts to scale digital health solutions, support countries’ digital health infrastructure, and share evidence-based learnings.
This Digital Health Compendium enables users to explore case studies across a range of digital health technologies used to enhance family planning programs mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in other regions of the world. Digital health applications in family planning programs can be broadly classified as those affecting demand generation, service delivery, supply chain management, and the policy and enabling environment. In many low- and middle-income countries, digital health innovations were adopted earlier in other health sectors, including HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and noncommunicable disease prevention and response. As a result, much of the impact evidence is likewise restricted to those sectors. To advance greater adoption of digital technology in family planning programs, more data and information on the challenges, opportunities, scalability, and results are needed. This compendium aims to consolidate emerging information and data on applications of digital technology in family planning programs to inform adoption and scale-up of successful approaches.
All of the case studies were submitted by the implementing organizations and include a description of the digital health intervention, program context, and, if available, important findings and lessons learned through rigorous evaluations or program data. The compendium facilitates a quick search for case studies based on the target user for digital health intervention, building block for the digital health enabling environment, family planning program classification, and country location. The case studies give policy and program decisionmakers insights on real-world applications of digital health, promising practices, challenges, and other lessons that can be applied to current and future programs.
The National Contraceptive Security Commission of Guatemala has automated the Family Planning Indicator Monitoring System in order to gather evidence of the health impact of family planning
Catherine Pak
Senior Technical Advisor
Palladium
Email
Palladium in support of USAID
The National Contraceptive Security Commission in Guatemala
USAID
Current Version 1.1.4; Updated July 22, 2019
Guatemala
Health Care Provider, Data Services Provider
Strategy and Investment, Legislation, Policy, and Compliance, Services and Applications
Policy and Enabling Environment
The National Contraceptive Security Commission (CNAA) of Guatemala was established to ensure the availability of contraceptives and guarantee the population’s access to family planning. Representatives of public organizations, civil society, and trade associations participate in the group; however, the integration of representatives from different areas, with different responsibilities and interests, has proved to be a challenge.
To address this challenge, Palladium, through the Health and Education Policy Plus (HEP+) project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), worked with the CNAA to apply the Collaborating, Learning, Adapting (CLA) framework to identify strengths and develop bonds of trust among its members. In addition, HEP+ facilitated activities to acknowledge the contribution of each member and to achieve agreements in planning, decisionmaking, potential allies, and joint action.
As part of these activities, HEP+ provided technical assistance to the CNAA to develop and implement an information system to automate their monitoring and evaluation framework and facilitate the work of collecting, processing, analyzing, and visualizing data on financial and family planning services. The tool includes indicators, grouped into three modules:
The main objective of the tool is to systematize family planning indicators for data collection, processing, and analysis conducted by multiple stakeholders. Family planning indicators include contraceptive financing, services, couple years of protection, and financial impact. This application is an integrated system for visualizing data and providing understanding and decisionmaking support related to the delivery and benefits of contraceptive commodities. A data-driven approach was used to design the technical and technological requirements of the tool. The system collects data from multiple stakeholders and displays it on user-friendly dashboards to facilitate CNAA’s decisionmaking to strengthen Guatemala’s national family planning strategies.
CNAA, its affiliates, and its civil society partners regularly convene to update the tool, improve its accessibility, and ensure timely financing of contraceptive supplies. These regular meetings continue to foster policy dialogue and advocacy for family planning.
The information provided by the tool has been used for different advocacy processes and presented to different key actors, including the Congress of the Republic of Guatemala. The information has also been analyzed for use by members of CNAA to promote strategies for extending the coverage of family planning methods nationwide.