Proposal for the Refinement of the World Health Organization's Health Metrics Network (HMN) Framework for Country Health Information Systems: A Federated Approach for Interoperability

This presentation describes a refinement to WHO’s Health Metrics Network (HMN) Framework that will allow a federated approach to the planning and implementation of national health information systems that will be harmonized and interoperable at the global level. The “operational planning” stage of the HMN Framework is equivalent to an “enterprise architecture (EA)” stage and this will allow the use of mature and detailed EA methodologies in the development of the HMN Framework operational plan. The strategic plans and operational plans of the HMN Framework can be federated at the global level down to national health organizations. At the global level, a broad strategic plan for country health information systems can be developed with a clear and compelling vision, goals, objectives, principles, and performance measures. From the global strategic plan, global components of the operational plan (such as the target architecture for the global health enterprise architecture, interoperability standards, and a common governance process) can be developed. The result should be a streamlined process where each country can take advantage of the components that have already been built by others in the global health community and rapidly build a national health information system that is interoperable with others at the global level.