Principles and Core Functions of Integrated Child Health Information Systems

In Brief Infants undergo a series of preventive and therapeutic health interventions and activities. Typically, each activity includes collection and submission of data to a dedicated information system. Subsequently, health care providers, families, and health programs must query each information system to determine the child's status in a given area. Efforts are underway to integrate information in these separate information systems. This requires specifying the core functions that integrated information systems must perform. This articles discusses a set of 19 principles, 22 core functions, and 8 desirable functions for integrated child health information systems that were proposed for 4 program areas: newborn dried blood-spot screening, early hearing detection and intervention, immunizations, and vital registration.