Agreement for Performance of Work (APW) on Health Information Portal Healthy Islands

Item Description:

The Health Intelligence and Innovation unit (HII), in collaboration with the Division of the Pacific Technical Support (DPS), is supporting Pacific Islands in strengthening their health information systems to increase capacity for monitoring progress towards the vision of Healthy Islands (HI), and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC).  A health information platform can be an effective monitoring tool and can help countries in improving data quality, data analysis and use.

HII is seeking an experienced IT solutions company to create a subregional platform for monitoring HI, SDGs and UHC in the Pacific Islands, for which, a prototype will be launched in the second quarter of 2019.

II. PURPOSE/SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE OF THE ACTIVITY

The platform will address the increased data processing, compilation and visualization needs to meet the reporting requirements at the national, regional and global levels, with consideration of the ICT infrastructure and internet connectivity constraints in the Pacific Island countries.

III. DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES TO BE CARRIED OUT

The selected vendor will carry out the following activities

1)       Requirements analysis and project scoping

This includes a review of World Health Organization technical documents on similar past IT projects such as the Health Information and Intelligence Platform (HIIP) and the Global Health Observatory (GHO), and elicitation of requirements from key stakeholders producing use-case analysis diagrams and mock-ups. Project plans including software development methodology for the project life cycle, as well as work breakdown structure and related project management plans should also be developed.

2)       Design and development of health indicator database

This includes a review of technical documents on WHO database structures of DHIS2, HIIP and GHO, in order to devise the best solution for the regional database for monitoring HI indicators. The database architecture should be able to handle all data types from these databases and should be flexible to accommodate data of hierarchical nature or with multiple stratification.

3)       Migration of historical data (DHIS2 PostgreSQL, Excel, MS SQL)

The most recent health indicators of Pacific Island countries for monitoring HI, SDGs and UHCs are stored in DHIS2 database. Other related health statistics from regional and global databases on Pacific Island countries are in HIIP and GHO. Thus, data from these three databases should be migrated to the health indicator database to enable trend analyses within-country and cross-country. This work includes only a one-time migration of all existing data in the said databases. Mechanisms for future updates will not be covered in this project but the database design needs to be able to support this.

4)       Data portal development

This includes identifying the best content management system and business intelligence tools for building the country profiles and regional dashboards (cross-country comparisons), and configuring these tools to meet the elicited and prioritized user requirements.  The portal should also include data search and presentation, and support for access using mobile devices.

5)       Application Programming Interface (API)

This includes support for data retrieval (with filters) using an API.  The output format can also be specified, such as CSV, JSON or Excel.

IV. METHODS TO CARRY OUT THE ACTIVITY

The vendor will conduct an initial project scoping based on a visit to the WHO regional office (Philippines) for face-to-face meetings, to engage with key stakeholders and elicit requirements. A more concrete requirements analysis, development of project plans, design and development of database and prototype applications will be done off-site using vendor resources (computers, development and testing servers, etc.). The vendor shall be in-charge of managing its project team and shall assign a focal person to coordinate with WHO HII focal person. Regular communications between HII and vendor will be done remotely using email, phone calls, Webex/Skype and/or other platforms. Organizational standards for web and database development projects will be discussed in detail with the selected vendor.

V. QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

EDUCATION

Essential:  The IT solutions company shall have professionals with at least a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related fields.

Desirable: Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related fields.

EXPERIENCE

Essential:  The IT solutions company shall have professionals with at least 10 years of work experience in using Microsoft .NET based frameworks, web development, database management, business intelligence tools, business analysis and project management

Desirable: Experience in using DHIS2 PostgreSQL, MS SQL server, Tableau, PowerBI.  Experience in project management using Agile methodologies. Previous experience working with WHO or other UN agency is an advantage.

TECHNICAL SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE

Database design and management, web applications development, business intelligence, business analysis, project management

LANGUAGES

Written and spoken fluency in English is essential.

COMPETENCIES

Communicating in a credible and effective way.

Producing results

Moving forward in a changing environment

Fostering integration and teamwork

Knowing and managing yourself

APPLICATIONS

Qualified and interested specialists should submit their Company Profile and Expression of Interest {cover letter} as well as their proposed rate to the Supply Officer through WP RO UNGM at < wproungm@who.int > by 7 January 2019.

The cover letter should outline how their experience and qualifications make them a suitable candidate for this position and should include their proposed fee and availability.

Please use Tender Notice No. WPRO/2018-12/DHS_HII/TN81758/bab as subject to all submission.  Only successful candidates will be contacted.