Reflecting on lessons learned and the impact of Hikma Health’s Year of Migrant Health

Clinician at MedGlobal in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh using the Hikma Health system to enter patient information during a patient visit. MedGlobal 2022.

Last spring, the first cycle of the Year of Migrant Health initiative came to a close. We are excited to reflect back on this past year to celebrate progress and reflect on lessons learned.

One year ago, we launched our first grant initiative to provide clinical organizations with funding to implement the Hikma Health system, an electronic health record (EHR) designed for low-resource settings. Though our technology has and always will be free and open-source, many clinical organizations need additional support to overcome the upfront costs associated with launching new technology.

As part of the YMH initiative, we partnered with 8 organizations from 8 countries around the world, each serving unique populations in low-resource settings. In addition to providing each organization grant funding to cover the up-front deployment costs associated with implementing a new technology platform, we provided targeted guidance and support to each organization based on their unique needs to be able to find technical talent, customize the open-source system based on their needs, and deploy the platform their organization’s clinical staff.

Over the course of the year, half of our grantees were able to deploy the Hikma Health system in their clinics by the end of the year. The remaining four organizations are continuing to make steady progress towards deployment and expect to launch in the coming months. Over half of the grantees were able to hire local technical talent to customize and deploy the system,  taking an essential step towards building sustainable technical capacity within their organizations. And by the end of the 12 months of the program, over 5,000 patient records had already been uploaded and stored securely in each organization’s customized deployment of the Hikma Health system, enabling clinicians to provide faster, more reliable, and more personalized care.

We have learned so much from our grantees this past year. Each organization navigated a unique set of challenges, balancing many competing priorities to continue to push the YMH project forward. Many organizations operate in areas of conflict and experienced unpredictable civil and political unrest. Additionally, many of the nations experienced natural disasters and extreme weather that severely impacted their healthcare systems, including in Nicaragua, Sudan, Somalia, and Bangladesh. While some of these obstacles were unavoidable, we were proud to be able to support our grantees and worked with each of them to accommodate changing circumstances by providing increased flexibility where possible.

To date, four grantees have begun using the Hikma Health system in their clinical practice:

• MedGlobal’s humanitarian clinical operation in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, primarily serving Rohingya refugees and other pregnant and postpartum women. 

• Saglamliga Khidmat Public Union (SKPU) in Baku City, Azerbaijan serving over 2,000 patients a year from diverse backgrounds, including refugees and internally displaced people, focusing on people living with tuberculosis, HIV, and a number of other chronic conditions. 

• Juba Foundation based in Mogadishu, Somalia managing health and nutrition projects in over 9 regions in the country. 

• Blue Mission Organization a community-based and independent organization based in Lebanon, that promotes and protects the rights of vulnerable populations. Their programs include primary health, mental health, education, life skills programs, training and protection. Blue Mission Organization utilizes mobile teams to deliver critical medical services to Syrian and Palestinian refugees, as well as Lebanese host community members.

Clinician working at SKPU in Baku, Azerbaijan capturing patient information during a tuberculosis screening using the Hikma Health system. SKPU 2022.

“Before our organization used to record the patient information on paper which took more time to include all the information by hand, and sometimes papers were lost. This was a good opportunity for our organization to deploy Hikma Health's EHR system. Now during the screening activities in remote areas where there is no internet access, it is easy to record all patient information on one system and then synchronize data.”

- Clinician at SKPU, Azerbaijan

The other four grantees are currently in the development phase of the deployment, Roberto Clemente Health Clinic in Nicaragua, Ibrahim Khan Jhagra Foundation in Pakistan, Diabetes Programs Promotion Organization in Sudan, and Refugee Health Alliance in Mexico and aim to deploy their customized EHR systems in the coming months. These organizations are taking an essential step towards improving healthcare services for the populations they serve. 

“Even without fully deploying the Hikma Health app yet, the deployment process itself helped mainstream the process of clinical care and contributed to highlighting the importance of structured data collection and its utilization to improve patient care.” - Clinician at DPPO, Sudan

We are gratified to see the impact that the Hikma Health system is having on healthcare organizations around the world. By providing a customizable, secure, and efficient system for patient recordkeeping, the system has the potential to improve healthcare outcomes and make a real difference in the lives of patients in diverse contexts and populations. We hope to continue supporting the incredible organizations and clinicians streamline their patient recordkeeping, improve data security, and provide faster, more efficient, and more personalized care to their patients.

We want to thank all of our donors and supporters who made the Year of Migrant Health Initiative a reality! 

Within the last year the world faced continued hardship, with UNHCR estimating over 100 million people were forced to flee their homes, escaping conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution. As we continue to face outbreaks of violence and conflict in many parts of the world, including Ukraine, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Syria, Myanmar, and Sudan - Hikma Health remains committed that organizations and clinicians serving these populations have the tools they need to provide quality healthcare. 

Please keep a look out for our upcoming 2023 grant initiative, building on lessons learned from 2022’s Year of Migrant Health. You can learn more the project, our incredible 2022 grantees, and ways to support our efforts here.