Reliable data on health facilities is the foundation of a functioning health system: you cannot plan services, allocate resources, or guide patients to care without knowing where facilities are, what they offer, and whether they are operational. In Cameroon, the Ministry of Health set out to build exactly that — a suite of digital tools, the Health Map ecosystem, that makes facility data accessible, structured, and useful for health system managers and the public alike.
The project was driven by the Ministry of Health and coordinated by the Directorate for the Organization of Care and Health Technology (Direction de l’organisation des soins et de la technologie sanitaire, DOSTS). Its governance brought together three Ministry teams — the DOSTS, the Health Information Unit (Cellule des Informations Sanitaires, CIS), and the IT Unit (Cellule Informatique, CI) — with Bluesquare providing the technical implementation as a subcontractor to CHAI (the Clinton Health Access Initiative).
This is what we built, what we learned along the way, and what comes next.
The health map building brought together three components, each serving a distinct group of users.
IASO is the data collection backbone of the project.
Rather than starting from scratch, we built on what already existed. IASO connects to DHIS2 Cameroon’s national health information system (HIS) — and extracts the existing health pyramid, which becomes the baseline that field teams then enrich for the health map. This same interoperability reduces duplicate data entry and consolidates facility data into a single, queryable environment.
In the field, agents collect data through structured mobile forms on their own phones. This bring-your-own-device (BYOD) approach lowers hardware costs and simplifies deployment across the country.
Data quality is actively monitored. A dedicated committee tracks progress and resolves the issues collectors run into — chiefly the completeness of records and the accuracy of GPS coordinates.
IASO also gives health-map administrators a dedicated query environment. They can, for example, pull the list of private facilities equipped with an MRI scanner and a blood bank — exactly the kind of question that supports strategic decision-making.
Ministry of Health staff, regional coordinators, and program officers access data through Apache Superset, a dashboarding layer built on top of IASO-collected data. Rather than static reports, Apache Superset provides decision-makers with dynamic, filterable views of health facility data across provinces and districts — designed for regular operational use.
The Health Map Cameroun mobile application allows citizens to locate health facilities near them. Users can also search for a facility by the service or specialty they need, or by the medical equipment it has. . The app draws directly from data validated in IASO and is available on the Google Play Store.
The full infrastructure was initially hosted by Bluesquare and has since migrated to local hosting in Cameroon; a step that reflects growing national ownership of the system.
Completing the health map ecosystem means going one step further: connecting these tools to a national Master Facility List (MFL). This is the next phase of the project that will move forward when the right conditions are in place, and that will make the full system truly integrated.
A Master Facility List (MFL) is the authoritative registry of all health facilities in a country. It records each facility’s name, geographic location, type, operational status, and place within the geographic structure of the health system, from national referral hospitals down to community health posts. In Cameroon, the MFL run on an application developed by the MoH with the layer of interoperability and is managed by OpenHIM, a health information mediator operated by the Ministry of Health.
A connected MFL is what transforms a set of useful tools into a fully integrated health information ecosystem.
Connecting the MFL to IASO, DHIS2, and the Carte Sanitaire application will make the entire ecosystem more accurate, more consistent, and more useful for everyone who relies on it.
Once a facility is registered or updated in the MFL, that change will be immediately reflected across data collection forms, analytics dashboards, and the public-facing mobile application — one source of truth, available everywhere. Health managers will work from a facility reference aligned with what the Ministry of Health considers authoritative. Citizens will find the latest up-to-date information when they search for care.
IASO has built-in interoperability mechanisms designed for exactly this kind of connection. The integration will move forward when the right conditions are in place. The health map ecosystem continues to serve field agents, health managers, and citizens; and that foundation is what the next step will build on.
