iHRIS:Understanding iHRIS Plan (4.0.4)
iHRIS Plan is a software program designed to support health workforce planners and decision makers in planning for their health workforce needs in developing country settings. The software enables planners and decision makers to evaluate their current and future human resources needs by cadre and then compare those needs to available health workers. The software graphically models available workers and workforce needs over time, enabling the user to visually assess the gap between them. The user may define and test various interventions -- or changes to the health workforce pool -- to try to close the gap between actual and required resources, and see the results of those interventions as they are dynamically calculated. In addition, tabular reports can be produced projecting actual numbers as well as health worker costs.
Using iHRIS Plan, workforce planners and decision makers can understand what will happen if different actions are taken to influence the health workforce or if no action is taken. These projections will help them prioritize policy changes by demonstrating which changes have greater or lesser impact on the health workforce. The projections will also alert planners to potential problems in the health workforce supply.
The workforce planning model helps workforce planners and policy makers answer the following types of questions:
- In the absence of any policy change, what will my country's health workforce look like in ten years?
- Based on current population projections, how many more nurses should I hire to meet the need?
- How much will increasing the mandatory retirement age increase available staff over the next ten years?
iHRIS Plan is intended to support health workforce planners, either working in or consulting with a Ministry of Health, in projecting workforce needs and impacts of policy on the health workforce at the national level, and presenting those projections to health policy and decision makers. iHRIS Plan will supply credible evidence to support health workforce planning and policy decisions. The goal is help decision makers focus on the path to take to achieve their envisioned outcome for the health workforce. These results should provide the basis for a short-term, national, strategic health workforce plan.
Features
Version 1.1.1 is intended to be an early pilot of iHRIS Plan. This pilot will be pilot-tested in a developing country and reviewed by workforce planning experts, who will provide feedback on priority features to include in later versions of the software.
The following features are included in this version:
- Define one or more pools of human resources by health worker cadre based on current health workforce data
- Project workforce supply for any number of years by specifying the number of health workers projected to leave or join the workforce each year
- Project health workforce targets based on population change
- Generate graphical models showing the gaps between actual workforce changes and projected workforce needed over time
- Aggregate or dis-aggregate models by health worker cadre
- Enable and disable cadre pool changes and display the effect of the changes on the model
- Project salaries and other costs of needed health workers
- Copy a projection
- Group projections by user-defined categories
- Windows (offline) version (included in Offline iHRIS 3.1.1)
The following features ensure security and accuracy of data stored in the system:
- Capture the sources of all data for verification
- Automated logging of the username, date and time when data are entered or changed for auditing purposes
- Permanent archiving of all data changes to ensure a consistent record
- Issue password-protected logins to allow only authorized users to access the data
iHRIS Plan will be extensible to the Capacity Project's other iHRIS products, iHRIS Qualify, a certification and licensing management system for health professionals, and iHRIS Manage, a human resource management system. Both of these systems are currently under development. For more information, please contact the iHRIS Development team).
Planned Features
The following features are planned for inclusion in later versions of iHRIS Plan:
- Export and print projection data
- Wizard interface to guide new users through creating a projection
- Extensive on-screen help developed by health workforce planning experts
- Incorporate current training data into the health worker pool to improve projected health worker supply
- More robust reports including a workforce plan template
- Enable users to input more data, if available, and generate more complex, robust and sophisticated projections by adding in other components of the WHO HRH Workforce Projection Model
- Analyze health workforce data by gender, age, public or private sector, geographical location, facility or institution type
- Import workforce data from iHRIS Manage and iHRIS Qualify
New features and development are ongoing. As this is an Open Source development project, volunteers and other organizations may also contribute to the core code. Check the iHRIS Plan page on the HRIS Strengthening Website for the most up-to-date list of planned features and a development calendar.
Data Checklist
Before you get started using iHRIS Plan, you will want to collect data on the current health workforce as well as changes to the workforce and general population information to enter in the program. The health workforce data may be available from a human resources information system, such as iHRIS Manage or iHRIS Qualify, or from a recent survey or census. It is important to note the sources of all data you obtain for later verification and updating of the projections.
Note that you can enter the data by health worker cadre. For example, you will create a separate health worker pool for nurses, doctors and allied health professionals. You should collect current supply and target data for each cadre, rather than for the health workforce as a whole.
You will need to collect the following data to enter in the program:
- population of the country or region where you are generating projections
- annual population growth rate, expressed as a percentage of the total population
- total number of staff actually employed in each health worker cadre
- target number of positions needed in each health worker cadre for the starting year or target health worker-to-population ratio for each cadre
- average annual salary of a health worker in each cadre
- average annual salary increase of a health worker in each cadre, expressed as a percentage of the average annual salary
The following are assumptions you can enter about changes to the health workforce over time. You do not need to have the data for all of these assumptions in order to create a projection, but the more data you enter, the more accurate your projection will be.
- average annual rate (expressed as a percentage) or total number of health workers exiting the health workforce each year due to retirement, by cadre
- average annual rate (expressed as a percentage) or total number of health workers exiting the health workforce each year due to death or illness, by cadre
- average annual rate (expressed as a percentage) or total number of health workers exiting the health workforce each year due to out migration, by cadre
- average annual rate (expressed as a percentage) or total number of health workers exiting the health workforce each year due to other reasons, by cadre
- average annual rate (expressed as a percentage) or total number of health workers entering the health workforce each year after graduating from a training program, by cadre
- average annual rate (expressed as a percentage) or total number of health workers entering the health workforce each year due to in migration, by cadre
- average annual rate (expressed as a percentage) or total number of health workers entering the health workforce each year due to recruitment or other reasons, by cadre
Note that you can also enter a percentage change in the total number of health workers entering or exiting the health workforce each year due to any reason. You can enter a maximum limit for the number of health workers if they are calculated due to a percentage change. Short-term changes can be limited to a specific number of years within the total span of the projection.
- average cost per worker of each intake or exit from the workforce, if applicable, such as training costs, recruitment costs or severance pay
