eHealth Africa Blog Master Facility List: Locating Health Facilities in Liberia

By Elizabeth ShelleyMinistry of Health, Liberia.eHealth Africa (eHA) is working closely with Liberia's Ministry of Health (MOH) to collect and compile information on all health facilities throughout Libera. Last month, a Master Facility List (MFL) was finalized, with complete datasets for all 844 health facilities in Liberia.The completion of this List is a key component of eHA's objective to create a true and accurate source of health facility information in Liberia. The List contains a complete account of several types of health facility data of high value to the MOH, including the facility's type (clinic, hospital, etc), it's geographic location, whether or not the facility is publicly or privately owned, whether the facility is currently functional, and each facility's unique identifier (UID)."The MFL is a significant milestone towards achieving health information standards in Liberia's Health Information Infrastructure"- Geoffrey Mimano, Software Project Manager, eHA In order to create this List eHA had to reconcile health facility data from disparate lists housed in a variety of locations and formats. eHA provided leadership and resources to contribute to the cleaning, classifying, and reconciling of health facility data in order to create a single and unified Excel line list. As a result, the MOH now has a complete and accurate master list, free of duplicated records and with facilities aligned with UIDs and mapped by services provided. Where records or data were missing, eHA furthermore supported the process of extracting coordinates and other information.The MFL is also a basic requirement for the development of a complete and interactive Health Facility Registry, which would serve as a single source of truth for uniquely identified information such as health facilities. eHA plans to develop this in the coming months.Using the data provided by the List, eHA will be able to improve the MOH's ability to search for and filter health facility data and to exchange information between different data applications. Once the registry is loaded to the MOH's website, members of Liberia's public will also be able to search for facilities by geographic location, services provided, resources available, etc.The Master Facility List, therefore, is a basic requirement for the successful execution of a wide variety of public health interventions and planning activities. See more stories and articles about eHA's innovative work by signing up for our monthly newsletter.