Abstract
Health information systems have not kept up with the demands and needs created by the sharp rise in human mobility over the past three decades. Most health information systems operate in national silos, and fail to provide a fully accurate, reliable and timely picture of the health and health care situation of a world on the move. As such, health needs of a large number of international migrants go unrecognized, and health systems fail to produce the evidence required for migrant-sensitive service planning, monitoring and public health action. The generation of such essential evidence relies on the inclusion of migrant health in health information systems in a consistent, comparable and ethically acceptable manner. A high-level consensus conference in Pecs (October 2019) noted the need for greater harmonisation and international cooperation on migrant health information systems, including data collection, analysis and dissemination. Taking the status quo of health information systems as a starting point, the workshop aims to present steps towards health system reforms which make information systems more sensitive and responsive to the health needs of increasingly mobile human populations. To this end, the workshop brings together researchers, policy makers and health professionals from different fields and institutions, to share existing knowledge, and by jointly exploring the following questions: What measures can we take to facilitate the harmonisation of migrant health indicators and data collection methods to ensure cross-border comparability, compatibility and completeness of data?How can we effectively improve international cooperation and governance of data management in order to share and transfer data for reasonable analysis, advocacy, and action?How can we initiate health systems reforms towards the above aims, considering that health systems are complex adaptive social constructs which are often resistant to change and not linear?What ethical and data protection considerations must be made when collecting, analysing and sharing migrant health data?How can build the required human resource capacities?
Key messages
Evidence based development of ‘migrant sensitive health care system’ requires specific, consistent and comparable health data Health systems harmonization on the field of migration requires supportive policy, guidance, infrastructure and trained human resources
Multilateral action to harmonise migrant health data in the WHO European region
