Expanding iHRIS to Support the Social Services Workforce

When we think of healthcare workers, we tend to think of doctors, nurses, midwives, and the like. We originally developed the iHRIS Suite to track and manage these traditional, well-defined cadres.

But many other professionals provide needed services in hospitals, clinics, and communties, and their roles may not be so well-defined. The social services workforce is a critical segment of these workers, bringing essential services to communities and their underserved populations, such as orphans and vulnerable children, the often unseen victims of the HIV epidemic.  Because there are few standards for job roles and qualifications in this sector, it’s hard to identify and hire qualified social workers and deploy them to where they can be most effective.

iHRIS can be customized to track all kinds of workers, not just the traditional healthcare cadres. We are now planning how to expand the iHRIS Suite to include the social services workforce.  The University of Dar-es-Salaam, in collaboration with the Tanzania Human Resources Project (THRP), has already customized a Para-Social Worker Tracking System module for iHRIS Manage; the module is up and running, tracking nearly 3,000 parasocial workers in Tanzania...