The IntraHealth International-led Uganda Capacity Program is supporting national implementation of the iHRIS software, Open Source software developed by the Capacity Project and supported by its bilateral associate awards and the global follow-on, CapacityPlus. The four professional health councils in Uganda use iHRIS Qualify to track licensure and certification software data, and the central Ministry of Health uses iHRIS Manage, HR management software that is being rolled out to each of the country’s more than 80 districts.

Until now, a small team of human resources information system (HRIS) specialists with the Uganda Capacity Program has been responsible for supporting the HRIS software needs of the Ministry of Health and currently at sites in 20 districts throughout the country. As more installations are added in additional districts, more people will be required to provide timely and reliable technical assistance to users across the nation.

To this end, Program leadership recently reached out to Makerere University to create an internship program. Six interns, culled from this year’s top graduates of Makerere University’s Department of Computing and Information Technology, started work with the Program on June 21. Over the next six months, the interns will complete any outstanding data entry, clean and analyze data, train users in data analysis, and assist with the iHRIS Manage rollout.

This is the first known HRIS internship program for any of IntraHealth’s projects. As the Uganda Capacity Program learns from this first round, the internship program will hopefully be scaled up and modified by other countries implementing iHRIS.