There is some confusion going around about CHITS (UP Manila’s Community Health Information Tracking System) and FHSIS (DOH’s Field Health Service Information System). Off the bat, CHITS is not FHSIS and FHSIS is not CHITS. These are two different systems but they are related. CHITS collects service level data from RHUs. FHSIS collects data for epidemiology purposes from the LGUs.
The automated election system (AES) is most useful in explaining how CHITS works.
The PCOS machine where you fed your ballot is very similar to CHITS. It collects the data on a per precinct level.
The Consolidation/Canvassing System (or CCS) is similar to FHSIS (Field Health Service Information System) which receives data from the PCOS machines and puts them together to come up with city-wide, province-wide, region-wide results. If you go to ibanangayon.ph, that is what FHSIS would ideally look like. Enhancements can be added but at the minimum, ibanangayon.ph will show you the current statistics by region, province, city, municipality, barangay, and precinct.
The PCOS and the CCS are made up of different software. The PCOS software is designed to be very good at collecting precinct level data. The CCS software is very good at collecting data from these PCOS machines and putting them together to get population level data (but not allowing the CCS to see who made the votes). Though composed of different software, they are able to talk to each other via election markup language (eml).
That is what is missing right now in the Philippine national health information system — the FHSIS-markup language (fml) — the language that connects the CHITS (and other electronic health records) to the FHSIS.
Now that we have a new president, we can look forward to the FHSIS markup language. And soon, we will have timely health data from the field.