© GIZ

IT companies are playing a critical role in the evolution of the Digital Public Good openIMIS. At the same time, the openIMIS community of practice is supporting the development of indispensable digital skills and expertise.

In 2020, the team at 2M Corp, a software company in The Gambia, were working to develop a digital solution for managing the Nafa Quick cash transfer scheme, providing relief to vulnerable communities worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. They knew the advantages of working with open-source solutions and saw great potential to adapt an existing software – openIMIS – for their purpose. Reflecting on that decision, Yolande M Goswell, 2M Corp Software and Project Manager, says:

Open source means that you don’t have to build from scratch. We were able to take openIMIS and showcase what it could do beyond health insurance, and we have since been able to bring new ideas to the openIMIS community.

Today, 2M Corp is just one of a growing number of software development companies around the world working on and with openIMIS. Private software developers from the Gambia, Nepal, Cameroon, and more, have played an essential role in transforming openIMIS from its origins as a health insurance information management system to its current iteration as a provider of versatile solutions for the management of health financing and social protection programmes.

The openIMIS Initiative, co-financed by the German Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the European Commission (EU), now supports the implementation of programmes in 14 different countries, benefitting more than 34 million people.

Private developers are driving innovation

Developers from any country can take the openIMIS source code – freely available on GitHub – and adapt the software to the needs of their specific programme. Through this customisation process, developers make improvements to existing functions and identify new features, which – after rigorous testing in different contexts – can then be fed back into the core product, improving it for everyone.

They say that there is nothing quite like a crisis to spark innovation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, health and social protection systems across the globe faced the dual pressures of sharply increasing demand for essential services, with fewer people available to provide them. In Nepal, this led directly to the development – by software developers Tinker Technologies – of a new openIMIS solution for the random sampling of insurance claims. This enabled Nepal’s Health Insurance Board to process thousands of claims per day with fewer staff, whilst also helping to identify potential fraud. The new functionality was extensively tested and later integrated into the core openIMIS product, ready for adaptation to social protection and health financing systems in other countries.

Of course, the innovations did not stop at the pandemic; Tinker Technologies has gone on to develop many openIMIS solutions for both the Health Insurance Board and the Social Security Fund of Nepal, and they also work directly on the openIMIS global product.

Harnessing private sector capacities

With a keen understanding of the value that private sector developers bring to the ongoing development of the software, the openIMIS Coordination Desk actively encourages the involvement of technology companies through a number of different channels. A Developers Committee brings together systems analysts, computer programmers and software engineers to maintain and address glitches in the software, provide technical support, and work on new solutions.

The committee plays a critical role in supporting developers through the process of adapting the software, particularly for those new to the product. Referring to the customisation of openIMIS for the management of the Universal Health Coverage scheme in Cameroon, Maxime Ngoe, Director General of Y-Note, a local software development company says:

This was our first opportunity to discuss the challenges we faced in developing the software and to find solutions together. If you are not an expert on digital health or health financing – which was our case a few years ago – it is important to have community members to help you learn and to get feedback on how to solve challenges in your particular context.

The openIMIS wiki advertises competitive tenders for work on the openIMIS platform, as well as other opportunities that could be of interest to developers. Between January 2020 and March 2025, 41 tenders for digital development work were advertised through openIMIS. Many of these were organised by GIZ, while others were issued by international development partners, such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the European Commission (EU), and government agencies and professional associations in German International Cooperation partner countries.

Partnerships between openIMIS and global digital stakeholders, such as PATH and Digital Square, further extend the reach of openIMIS and provide entry points for exciting new collaborations. One such example is the Africa-based Digital Health Entrepreneurs List; a curated list of 112 digital entrepreneurs established by PATH as potential local partners for leveraging and adapting existing digital tools in response to health system challenges.

Strengthening IT capacities in partner countries

A more sustainable approach to the development of Digital Public Goods is founded upon well-developed IT sectors that can supply skilled technicians and computer engineers; the people who develop and maintain the digital systems which underpin public service delivery. Without local experts, governments must either hire expensive external IT consultants or face the resulting loss of agility and dynamism as their systems fail to benefit from technological advances. With this in mind, German International Cooperation is actively strengthening private developer markets in partner countries, in line with BMZ’s Digital Policy.

These efforts are evident in Bangladesh, where GIZ implements the Social Protection for Workers in the Textile and Leather Sector (SOSI) project on behalf of BMZ. With the aim of strengthening Bangladesh’s nascent social insurance systems, the project is supporting the customisation of openIMIS for the management of the country’s first-ever Employment Injury Insurance Scheme for garment sector workers.

The pilot employment injury insurance programme already covers all four million of the readymade garment sector workers, and the Government of Bangladesh aims to extend cover to workers in related sectors, such as the leather and footwear industries. Local IT partners will be contracted to work on the expansion and customisation of the current openIMIS implementation to facilitate the expansion of the programme.

Although openIMIS provides a ‘Developers Starter Kit’ to help new developers understand and work with openIMIS, mastering a new software can be challenging, particularly in countries where there is little previous implementation experience. Mindful of this, in 2024 the openIMIS Coordination Desk helped the GIZ-supported SOSI programme to contract technology solutions provider SolDevelo to introduce Bangladeshi IT companies to openIMIS. Through a series of training workshops in Dhaka, SolDevelo – which is based in Poland – equipped four local developer companies with everything they need to know about openIMIS, enabling them to bid for the forthcoming contract.

This successful approach — which other Digital Public Good providers can surely follow — not only stimulates competition among developers and spurs innovation; it also strengthens local technology markets by widening the pool of expertise for developing Digital Public Goods. ‘Should the Government of Bangladesh wish to issue an open tender for digital development work,’ says Syed Moazzem Hussain, Senior Social Protection Advisor at GIZ in Bangladesh, ‘there are now at least four trained vendors available who would be able to bid.’

Investing in the next generation of developers

Companies working with openIMIS quickly become ambassadors for the open-source software, and some are also investing in the next generation of developers by providing their own training on openIMIS to computer science students and young developers. This helps to ensure a larger pool of well-trained developers as their businesses expand.

In Nepal, Tinker Tech is planning a collaboration with Kathmandu University to provide training on Nepal’s digital health systems – which include openIMIS – for postgraduate students on the Health Informatics degree programme. And in the Gambia, 2M Corp has established an internship programme where young technicians can gain hands-on experience of working with openIMIS.

The openIMIS regional hubs also play an important role in developing IT skills in the public and private sectors. AeHIN, which manages the openIMIS Community of Practice in Asia, used openIMIS as an operational tool to teach medical and health informatics students in the Philippines about standard business processes of health financing programmes. KeHIA is playing a similar role in East Africa, as Dr Sylvia Mwelu, KeHIA’s Digital Health Technical Lead, explains:

We engage computer science students in academic institutions in the region, exposing them to openIMIS before they graduate. Once they transition into the field, they take this knowledge with them as our champions.

A successful business model for developers

Designed to be interoperable with other information systems, such as electronic medical records and DHIS2, openIMIS draws upon and contributes to Digital Public Infrastructure, bringing much-needed efficiencies from information sharing, both within and across health, social protection and other public service sectors.

It also widens opportunities for private software developers; working with openIMIS and other Digital Public Goods becomes an increasingly attractive business proposition. As openIMIS Adviser, Konstanze Lang, explains :

Private sector providers who wish to engage with Digital Public Goods can now choose from among a selection of interoperable tools. They can build on existing solutions and develop them into a rich portfolio of interactive programmes that can enhance health and social protection programmes.

Furthermore, when asked about why they like working with openIMIS, IT businesses cite the confidence that comes from knowing that openIMIS is continually tried and tested in different contexts by a diverse set of users, as well as the active and supportive community of software developers, users and implementers.

What comes next for private developers and openIMIS?

In today’s increasingly interconnected world, it makes sense to replicate and extend what is already working well, while continuing to invest in new ideas and ways of working. Replicating the training on openIMIS modules and functionalities for local software companies is one such priority, helping to extend openIMIS’ reach into new countries while building national capabilities. Actively supporting discussions on digital standards and guidelines that inform the development and operation of digital health and social protection services and applications — for example, the interoperability standard HL7FHIR — is another.

Reflecting on the success of the training provided by SolDevelo in Bangladesh, GIZ’s Syed Moazzem Hussain said, ‘As we work with more open-source products, such as openIMIS, we are receiving more and more requests to build local capacities in the country. The potential for us to invest in a national open-source community is huge.’ Extending the global and regional openIMIS communities down to the national level could be the way of the future.

Corinne Grainger
April 2025