Webinar: What Interoperability Actually Means

Q: Could you talk about CommCare Academy?

A: Erin: Dimagi Academy is an online learning center that hosts a variety of courses designed to equip individuals and organizations with the skills and knowledge they need to build CommCare mobile applications and manage CommCare projects. Used by hundreds of learners around the world, Dimagi Academy offers free, on-demand courses, study guides, and test packages, as well as special courses for organizations.

Q: For me, interoperability would mean how the application interacts with software/other databases such as DHIS2, OpenMRS, etc. I have read that this is possible. can we have a demonstration, or a webinar focused on examples of these achievements in the future?

A: Take a look at this CommCare | DHIS deck.

Q: @Rashim - Do you think that the SMS function for CommCare can be applied on CARM - Accountability application for Feedback. Thank You.

A: Yes, CommCare supports 2-way SMS-based surveys which are commonly used for CARM use cases.

Q: What is exactly the mentioned Business Intelligence Tool? Is this the layer of interoperability done? Can you clarify?

A: Our partners use a wide variety of BI tools to analyze their data. Trocaire (Rashmi’s team) uses Tableau quite often, and MSI (Jenna’s team) and Global Communities (Tony’s team) both use PowerBI to do most of their data analysis. Both of these tools have direct integrations with CommCare.

Q: Thanks Mary for sharing this, good to see its integration with multiple other systems. I thought I typed a question about DHIS2 and OpenMRS integration. I had a slight network glitch so I guess it was lost. I see Mary is already talking about DHIS2 integration. Great! Can some kindly talk about OpenMRS integration?

A: CommCare does support integration with OpenMRS, but unlike our self-service integration with DHIS2, currently it is only available as a part of our professional services offering where we configure the integration through a service engagement with us. 

Q: Very interesting presentations, many thanks for that. One question to Dimagi colleagues and any panelists: what do you think that FHIR's role is in supporting interoperability and what do you do about that? Many thanks.

A: Championing New Integrations for Increased Interoperability and Impact - Dimagi

Q: What is the time-frequency to see live data from CommCare into DHIS2?

A: For integration with DHIS2’s Tracked Entities and Anonymous Events modules, CommCare data is forwarded to DHIS2 in real time. For integration with DHIS2’s Data Sets module, aggregated CommCare data is sent to DHIS2 on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Q: How do the panelists utilize interoperability/the CommCare ecosystem to follow/implement their programmatic and organizational logframes?

A: Panelists provided answers in the live webinar session.

Q: What are some of the Telerevit SMS providers in Africa especially East Africa that you are aware of?

A: Telerivet is a software that helps you create a gateway using an Android phone/ tablet and a local SIM card from any telcom provider. Because the SMSes are sent using the local SIM, oftentimes this can be a much more affordable solution in the long-term

Q: For the presenters - what is the one thing you wished you had thought about or known when you started off designing your CommCare apps/set up in terms of supporting scalability? Thank you for your wonderful discussion :)

A: Answered in-person during the live webinar.

Q: This is my first CommCare webinar, how is it different from the ODK?

A: Although there are a few distinctions between ODK and CommCare, the core feature that distinguishes CommCare is something called Case Management which is a technology that allows you to register and track data about "cases" (which could be anything from pregnant women to farmer’s fields) offline between forms. CommCare has both free and paid offerings. A few groups have put together comparisons of different features which may be helpful to identify what dimensions are important to your use case.

Q: Likely problems you did experience in the various stages during the interoperability.

A: Answered in-person during the live webinar.