Export Vital Events to DHIS2

Who / when: the health-information officer (the staff member responsible for statutory reporting), at the end of a reporting period — typically monthly — when registered vital events need to be sent on to the national health-information system. Veona keeps a running register of every birth and death recorded at your facility; this flow rolls those events up into the standard aggregate file the reporting platform expects, so you don’t tally anything by hand. The aggregate counts, not patient names, are what crosses the line.

We’ll follow Ngozi, a health-information officer preparing the monthly return.

Two terms worth knowing up front:

• DHIS2 — District Health Information Software 2, the open-source platform many national and district health authorities use to collect and report routine health statistics.
• IHE-ADX — the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise profile called Aggregate Data Exchange: a published standard for sending aggregate (counted, de-identified) health data — the format DHIS2 ingests.

1. Health-Information Officer — open Vital Records → Reports. This is where the register’s events are turned into reportable files.
2. Health-Information Officer — choose the reporting period and the DHIS2 (IHE-ADX) export format, then run the export. Veona aggregates the registered vital events for that period into a single XML file and the download begins.
3. Health-Information Officer — the file you receive is a valid IHE-ADX aggregate: an XML document carrying a data group of aggregate values (the counts of births and deaths for the period), tagged with the IHE-ADX profile identifier so DHIS2 recognises it. Upload that file into your DHIS2 instance as you would any other aggregate import.
4. Health-Information Officer — if you need the line-level detail instead (for an internal review or a different authority), choose the death-register CSV format on the same screen to export the register as a spreadsheet rather than an aggregate.

Note

The IHE-ADX export is an aggregate — it carries period totals, not identifiable patient records. That’s deliberate: routine statistical reporting needs counts, not personal health information, so the file you send onward never contains a deceased person’s name or identity. The CSV death-register format, by contrast, is line-level and stays inside your facility for internal use.

Tip

A copy of every export is retained in Veona’s encrypted storage as it is generated, so you have a durable, audited record of exactly what was reported for each period — useful when an authority later asks you to confirm a submission.

What happens next

The aggregate file is now ready for DHIS2; once you import it there, your facility’s births and deaths are reflected in the national figures for the period. Back in Veona, the export is logged to the audit trail and the encrypted copy is kept, so the return is reproducible. Each period you simply repeat the export for the new reporting window — the register has been accumulating events the whole time, including every death finalised through the certificate flow (Issue a Death Certificate) and every body managed from Manage a Death From Mortuary Bay to Release.

Follow the trail

• Previous: Issue a Death Certificate
• Related: Manage a Death From Mortuary Bay to Release