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MERIT - Monitoring & Evaluation Reporting & Integration Tool
Challenges Entered:
NPOKI is a collaboration of international health organizations. The members are at the forefront of providing access to safe and affordable health services globally, including a focused response to the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Most foundation and government-funded health projects worldwide report back using various forms and data aggregation tools measuring work done against a set of indicators of success. Data is aggregated at several levels. There is a well-recognized need for a managed, accessible, central indicator tracking system that would enable a project team to enter and track its indicator data, along with their targets and actual outcomes.
NPOKI has designed and developed a working prototype web-based indicator tracking system, the Monitoring & Evaluation Reporting & Integration Tool, appropriate for all of our members and in-country partners. It allows project teams to establish project/program indicators capable of meeting a variety of criteria:
- Indicators that work within one or multiple frameworks.
- Indicators that capture different levels of detail.
- Indicators that can be matched to various collection schedules.
The key components of MERIT include (or will include):
- M&E Results Framework
- Comprehensive Indicator Pool and Performance Monitoring Plan (PMP)
- Easy data input and robust analysis platform
- Web-based, using tested, secure development platform (dotNET)
- SharePoint and low resource ready
- Flexible dimension manager
- 3D Matrix
- Offline functionality
- Multi-Audience Dashboards
- Flexible Reporting engine
- OpenAPI
- Installation Routine
- Technical Documentation
- User Documentation
MERIT I finished its beta testing in November 2008. It is currently being used by four international health organizations in various locations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America:
Specifications for MERIT II, including its mobile phone integration, are currently being developed.
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Interesting project!
(Columbia University Mobile Technology Team)
Hi! Your project seems very interesting and with great potential. Our team has a project which goes in the same direction -- monitoring nutrition indicators. I think we can definitely learn from each other. A next step that would be interesting is to be able to consilidate the indicators across borders.
Rapid data input
Great idea, and definitely useful for a range of health-related programs that crunch field-driven data.
In terms of mobile support: the dashboard looks relatively complex, and might not lend itself to easy and rapid usage in the field. Is the mobile version geared for simpler, rapid "point-of-sale"-style data input, with the option to add more detail when back at headquarters?