Project lead: Dr Lindi Mathebula (lindi.mathebula@mrc.ac.za)
About PHIDA
PHIDA is a professional body of work focused on strengthening the collection, management, structuring, analysis, and translation of health and research data into evidence for decision-making. The portfolio brings together work across clinical research informatics, data management and analytics, evidence and decision intelligence, and methods and capacity development, with a particular interest in practical approaches relevant to African health and research systems.
Mission
To apply public health informatics, data and analytical methods to strengthen data quality, interoperability, evidence intelligence and evidence-informed decision-making.
Objectives
- Strengthen the quality, management, accessibility and responsible use of health and research data.
- Improve how data are structured, connected and reused through informatics and interoperability approaches.
- Generate useful insights from health and research data through data interrogation, analytics, reporting and visualisation.
- Connect research data with evidence synthesis, policy analysis and decision-support processes.
- Develop practical, reusable tools, methods and guidance for public health informatics and analytics.
- Build and share capacity in data management, informatics, analytics and evidence-to-decision approaches.
Workstreams
PHIDA is organised around four interconnected work streams.
Focuses on the practical management, quality assurance, extraction, curation, interrogation and analysis of health and research data. This includes registry data management, data completeness and validation, data extraction and preparation, data cleaning and curation, data interrogation and descriptive analysis, routine and analytical reporting, data requests and secondary use, dashboards and data visualisation, and the preparation and quality assurance of structured registry data submissions
Focuses on the systems, standards and digital workflows that support clinical research and clinical trial registration. This includes clinical trial registry systems and workflows; research data systems and database architecture; REDCap and structured data capture; clinical research data standards; Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT); interoperability and structured search; registry workflow improvement; and governance and auditability.
Focuses on transforming health and research data into structured intelligence and evidence products to support research planning, evidence synthesis, policy and decision-making. This includes research and evidence intelligence, publication tracking, evidence mapping, research landscape analysis, evidence-to-policy informatics, dashboards and decision-support products, evidence cards and evidence briefs, and structured links between trials, publications, evidence synthesis and policy needs.
Focuses on making PHIDA approaches practical, reusable and transferable through tools, guidance and capacity strengthening. This includes frameworks and methodological approaches, reusable templates, data dictionaries and technical documentation, analytical and decision-support tools, training and workshops, practical demonstrations, technical guidance and knowledge sharing.
Current Projects & Collaborations
This work includes registry data management, data quality and completeness checks, data curation, extraction and interrogation of registry data, analytical reporting and dashboards, stakeholder reporting, WHO-ICTRP data submissions, and ongoing improvement of registry systems and workflows.
Continuous improvement project to strengthen clinical trial registration workflows, including SANCTR-to-PACTR integration, data validation processes, change controls, reporting, and approaches to reducing duplication while maintaining registry governance and auditability.
This project explores how African clinical trial registries can move beyond registration towards more connected evidence pipelines, including structured data, interoperability, evidence synthesis and research intelligence. It includes developing and piloting a prototype to link registered trials with publications and transform them into structured research intelligence for evidence synthesis and decision-making.
A collaborative programme with the Health Inequality Monitoring & Equity Analysis portfolio explores how disaggregated health data can identify inequalities and how inequality monitoring can inform policy analysis and decision support. PHIDA contributes to developing practical products that help translate analysis into decision-ready information, including dashboards, evidence cards, evidence briefs, equity profiles, policy brief structures, data dictionaries and related technical resources.