Health Ministry launches digital training platform

Sarah Cord­ner

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Health­care sec­tor is now in pos­ses­sion of a new Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem (LMS). The sys­tem was de­vel­oped with the sup­port of the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment through the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) and the Pres­i­dent's Emer­gency Plan for AIDS Re­lief (PEP­FAR). The net­work will serve as a cen­tralised dig­i­tal hub for train­ing, pro­vid­ing health­care work­ers across the Min­istry of Health and the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties with struc­tured and ac­ces­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment and al­so aims at strength­en­ing knowl­edge-shar­ing across T&T’s pub­lic health sec­tor.

The pro­gramme was un­veiled on Fri­day and is set to strength­en the use of the Dis­trict Health In­for­ma­tion Soft­ware 2, which is ex­pect­ed to im­prove the col­lec­tion, analy­sis and use of health da­ta, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mon­i­tor­ing and re­spond­ing to HIV/AIDS.

The Unit­ed States Em­bassy in T&T al­so do­nat­ed 28 tablets to the Min­istry of Health which will be used to sup­port da­ta col­lec­tion for in­di­vid­u­als ac­cess­ing HIV test­ing ser­vices, strength­en­ing pro­gramme mon­i­tor­ing and sur­veil­lance ef­forts.The event al­so ac­knowl­edged health­care work­ers who com­plet­ed on­line train­ing as well.

Min­is­ter of Health, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the US Gov­ern­ment for their con­tin­ued tech­ni­cal sup­port and part­ner­ship in strength­en­ing this coun­try’s health in­for­ma­tion sys­tems. He said, “Through the val­ued sup­port of the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion and PEP­FAR, Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to ad­vance its health sys­tems strength­en­ing agen­da in a man­ner that is both mean­ing­ful and mea­sur­able.”

Speak­ing at the launch, Deputy Chief of Mis­sion, Char­lie Fran­ta, high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of the part­ner­ship be­tween both coun­tries, say­ing, “To­day’s event is a pow­er­ful tes­ta­ment to the en­dur­ing and ro­bust bi­lat­er­al part­ner­ship be­tween the Unit­ed States and the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go that makes the peo­ple of our two great na­tions safer and health­i­er."