Developing National Repository of Child

Health Information for India

International Conference on Digital Libraries and

Knowledge Organization – ICDK - 2011
Venue: MDI,Gurgaon
Technical Session, 16 February 2011

Mr. Anil Kumar Mishra, Dr. Supreet Kaur, Dr. Rajesh Khanna
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Prof. Deoki Nandan

National Child Health Resource Centre,

National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW)
New Delhi, India
 Contents:

• NCHRC, NIHFW and Why ‘Repository on Child

Health?
• Situational analysis
• Plan & Steps of development
• Software selection
• Key features of Repository
• Conclusions and Impact
 National Institute of Health &
Family Welfare

•Apex Technical Institute funded by MOHFW

•Main national level agency for training, education,
research, evaluation & consultancy
•Since 2007 several new training courses, developed
partnerships and mechanisms
 FUNCTIONS

Education Research
and and
Training Evaluation

Consultancy
& Advocacy

Specialized Specialized
Services Projects
 National Child Health Resource
Centre
• Established in 2008 at National Institute of Health
and Family Welfare (NIHFW) with financial support
from Norway-India Partnership Initiative (NIPI)

• Aims to strengthen the focus on child health and

mainstream child health agenda in public health

• Create a platform at national level for discussion and

information sharing on relevant issues.
 Background Information
• Poor status of child health:
o Contributes to more than one fifth of the under 5 child
deaths globally.
o 1.6 million children die before one year of age
o Low percentage of fully immunized children(44%)

• Various Government initiatives to improve the status

of child health including the most recent National
Rural Health Mission (NRHM)
 Lack of Information Management
• Lead to the generation of an abundant resource of
information

• Information lies scattered and inaccessible to the

public

• Repository on Child Health is an attempt to mitigate

this problem and improve management of child
health information.
 Situation Analysis On Existing
Repositories In India
• WHO- India Health Repository: Key information on
Health sector and health systems, limited information,
not updated.
• National Health Information Collaboration (NHIC):
Information mainly on scientific articles & thesis,
information submitted through the authorized content
providers only.
• Policy Reforms Option Data Base: Includes case studies
and innovative ideas on health sector reforms only.
• NGO Gateway: Contains information related to HIV/AIDS
only.
 Our findings

• Child Health information, not in single place.

• Inadequate sharing and exchange of
information
• Lack of coherence between the needs and the
programs
• Poor visibility of child health issues
• Duplication of efforts.
 Plan for Repository Development
• Goal : Comprehensive ‘National Repository’ of
information on child health under a single roof.

• OBJECTIVES:
o Collect published and unpublished information on child
health
o Make this resource freely available
o Prevent duplication of efforts
o Disseminate updated information.
 Target Audience

• Policy makers
• Child health specialists
• Public health professionals
• Frontline workers

Sources For Collection Of Information:

• National and International Organisations.
 Steps For Development

• Listing and contacting agencies

o Data base of more than 900 organizations developed.

• Collection of materials
o More than 600 resource materials collected.
 Process for Information Management
• Recorded in ‘log of records’ with unique serial number
Resource • Transfer the materials to folder ‘Unclassified materials’
Materials
received

• Distribute materials among subject experts for review

• Experts write abstracts, keywords and category of the
Review of
Materials material

• Categorize reviewed material based on ‘List of

categories ’
Categorization
& Uploading • Upload the categorized materials on the Repository
 Categorization
TOPICS Each topic divided into
THEME
• Maternal health •Policies, programs,
• Newborn child health • guidelines
• Immunization •Technical publication
•Trainings
• Nutrition •Statistical information
• Diseases •Scientific article
•IEC/BCC Gallery
• General information
 Selection Of Software And Customization
• Comparison of all the available open source software like
Joomla, Drupal.
• Selected Drupal CMS on Windows
platform.
 Advantages of Drupal:
• Stable and compatible for our requirements.
• Updated regularly
• Completely customizable to fit the needs
• Provides access to the digital work through one
interface.
• Accepts and suited for any type of digital contents
including texts, Images, PPTs, Audio-Video etc.
 Key Features Of Repository
• Launched in July 2010

• Collection & management of 600 resource materials

• Free/open access to full text document or resource material for

all users

• Categorization of information into specific Topics & Themes

• Abstract, Keywords, Source & Year of Publication for each

document along with cover page photograph

• Thesaurus (standardized vocabulary) & Link keywords

www.childhealthindiainfo.com / www.childhealthindia.info
Source: Google Analytics
Source: Google Analytics
Source: Google Analytics
Source: Google Analytics
 Conclusion
• Collation and management of child health
information at a single place

• User friendly interface, Open access

• Increasing support from organizations

• Interest shown by Ministry of Health & Family

Welfare to give a link on their website
“Sharing knowledge is not about giving people
something, or getting something from them. Sharing
knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested
in helping one another develop new capacities for
action; it is about creating learning processes.”

Peter Senge
Thank you
Anil Mishra
http://twitter.com/anilkmishra