Abu Sadat Sayem

and 3 more

Background: The health sector is one of the outstanding performers through remarkable digitalization in health. Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) was implemented in Bangladesh to investigate the causes of maternal and perinatal deaths in community and health facilities. Objectives: The purpose was to explore information systems available to assess the MPDSR program status, the planning process, gaps and barriers and actions developed using real-time information. Data Collection and Analysis: This study included both primary and secondary data analysis. Six key informant interviews and MPDSR action plans were reviewed from seven districts. Secondary collected from 27 districts. Results: This study revealed that the government health information systems could notify 62% of the maternal deaths and 29% of the neonatal deaths. Despite the challenges in data quality, the health managers developed action plans. The death and service data showed positive changes in most of the districts despite COVID 19 pandemic. Information systems like the MPDSR dashboard and RMNCAH scorecard could is used as tools to assess the impact of actions in a real-time manner. Major gaps are weak monitoring, non-functional MPDSR committees and incoordination, IT issues, blaming culture, and lack of capacity in analyzing data. Conclusion: The outcome of the MPDSR program depends upon how the data is converted to action and measuring the impact. Innovative data visualization tools like health dashboards, scorecards, and administrative data can play a pivotal role in measuring and evidence-based planning. The major challenge remains with capturing all deaths and weak data analysis capacity.