openIMIS Newsletter - March 2026
Welcome to our March 2026 newsletter! Many exciting things have happened that we want to call your attention to:
Latest Highlights:
- openIMIS Hackathon (Berlin, Germany) | February 17-20
- Burundi Cash for Jobs program highlighted by the World Bank
Recent Articles
- Advancing Universal Health Coverage in Comoros with openIMIS
- Building sustainable digital public goods through academic partnerships: the approach of openIMIS
Recent Events and Activities
- Bhela call (online): Streamlining Healthcare delivery and insurance claims through interoperability | January 26
- Global Digital Health Forum 2025 (Nairobi, Kenya) | December 3-5
Your openIMIS Coordination Desk Team
Latest Highlights
openIMIS Hackathon (Berlin, Germany) | February 17-20
Innovative ideas took center stage at the recent, four-day openIMIS Hackathon in Berlin. Software developers, IT solution providers and representatives from government agencies worked side by side to develop new features for openIMIS. New companies also joined the community, bringing their expertise in AI technologies, digital identification and authentication, and more.
The teams worked on the rapid development of new functionalities:
- A tool for optical character recognition (OCR) for document verification, developed by Chen Cheta, Rajesh Chapagain, Abe Karar and Sunil Parajuli
- A live facial verification function to verify beneficiary eligibility, developed by Mohammad Ismail, Dayal Das, Maxime Ngoe, Noroz Haidar and Sayed Najaf Ali
- A customizable forms generation tool to streamline social protection targeting, developed by Ashish Joshi, Patrick Delcroix, Sopulpanha Teay, Tithrottanak You and Mohammad Hasanuzzaman
These exercises have added tremendous value to the openIMIS ecosystem as features that will be available online soon.
You can read the full article on our website here.
Burundi Cash for Jobs project highlighted by the World Bank
In Burundi, the Cash for Jobs Project – locally known as Merankabandi – is managed using CORE-MIS powered by openIMIS.
In a recent World Bank blog (Jan 2026) Aissata Coulibali, Anthony Belem, Andrea Martin, Mona Niebuhr share insights on how the CORE-MIS solution has strengthened program delivery in social protection and achieved tangible results within just five months: “The system was essential for delivering emergency cash transfers to over 30,000 beneficiaries and for scaling up the project nationally across Burundi to reach more than 315,000 households – about 1.5 million individuals.”
Building on these early successes, the Government of Burundi is now considering using the solution “beyond the Cash for Jobs Project to support Burundi’s broader social protection agenda, including the Unified Social Registry (…).”
Read the full article on the openIMIS website (re-published with permission by WB) in English and French
Read the concept note for more technical information here.
Recent Articles Published
Advancing Universal Health Coverage in Comoros with openIMIS
Comoros has taken a significant step toward achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) through the launch of the Generalized Health Insurance (AMG) program, with openIMIS serving as a key digital solution for health insurance management.
In collaboration with Assurance Maladie Généralisée (AMG), Swiss TPH, AEDES - Agence Européenne pour le Développement et la Santé, Y-NOTE, BIDev, and Etech, the openIMIS platform has been customized to address Comoros’ unique requirements, including support for polygamous family structures, new facility types, and pre-authorized services. The pilot phase, initiated in December 2025 on the island of Mohéli, has already enrolled over half of the target population (318,000+ individuals across seven districts) and integrated 68 health facilities, demonstrating strong progress toward nationwide implementation.
To learn more, please find our recent news on the openIMIS website.
Building sustainable digital public goods through academic partnerships: the approach of openIMIS
Partnerships between openIMIS and academic institutions are a win-win, creating shared benefits for both sides. For academic institutions in partner countries, the introduction of openIMIS as a teaching tool offers students hands-on experience with real-world digital health and social protection systems, helping to prepare the future workforce. For openIMIS, students bring a fresh perspective, contribute innovations, and help to generate policy-relevant research.
A new article on Healthy Developments explores how these collaborations extend beyond the classroom - contributing to the sustainable development of digital health and social protection capacities, growing the evidence base for open-source digital public goods, and supporting countries in their work towards more integrated and efficient health financing systems.
Recent Events and Activities
Bhela Community Call | January 28 (Online)
Streamlining healthcare delivery and insurance claims through interoperability
How can interoperability enable countries to move seamlessly from service delivery to payments - without paperwork, delays, or administrative bottlenecks? The January 2026 Bhela Community Call explored this question through a concrete interoperability use case from Nepal, presented by Maxime Ngoe (Y-Note) and Sunil Parajuli (Tinker Tech).
Through a live demo, the session demonstrated how the hospital information and medical records system Bahmni connects to openIMIS via Odoo (an enterprise resource planning system that generates hospital billing data) and openHIM which securely transfers patient data to openIMIS for claims processing.
Scenarios like this one are being developed within the openIMIS sandbox project, which creates a platform for exploring and teaching interoperability with hands-on demonstrations using meaningful demo data.
A short summary article on the Bhela can be found on the openIMIS website. To download the presentation or watch the recording, please visit this openIMIS wiki page.
Global Digital Health Forum 2025 (Nairobi, Kenya) | December 3-5
In December 2025, the Global Digital Health Forum (GDHF) in Nairobi brought together policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to explore advancements in digital health systems. Among the key discussions, openIMIS was featured in several sessions highlighting its role in supporting interoperability and health financing. Presentations included insights from implementations in Cameroon and Nepal, where openIMIS has contributed to integrating previously fragmented healthcare systems through scalable, data-centric approaches. A collaborative session with the Community Health Toolkit (CHT) demonstrated how interoperability between the two platforms can bridge community health feedback with financing mechanisms.
Additional sessions focused on customization and standards-based integration, such as the adaptation of openIMIS for Comoros’ national health insurance program to accommodate diverse family structures, and its alignment with HL7 FHIR standards in Nepal to enhance system trust and engagement. The forum reinforced the importance of collaborative innovation in digital health, with openIMIS serving as a case study for how open-source solutions can address local and global challenges. Gratitude is extended to the organizers and participants for their contributions to these meaningful exchanges.
Find a summary article on our website, and the documentation including presentations (for download) here.
You can also read this newsletter article on our LinkedIn page here.