DHIS2 News: Kristin and Jørn Braa Receive AIS Impact Award from the Association for Information Systems

The Association for Information Systems (AIS) has awarded the 2023 AIS Impact Award to Professors Kristin Braa and Jørn Braa of the HISP Centre in recognition of the societal impact of the Braa siblings’ nearly 30 years of work with HISP and DHIS2.

AIS Impact Awards recognize information systems research with widespread impact on practice in business and society. The key criteria are “breadth of use in practice as well as relevance to information systems research,” with particular weight put on how widely the research has been adopted. Through their work with HISP, the Braa siblings have contributed to the adoption of the open-source DHIS2 software platform in more than 80 low- and middle-income countries, where it is used to support the effective management of public-sector programs in health, education, and more.

Dr. Jørn Braa has been involved in HISP since its beginnings in 1994 in post-Apartheid South Africa as an action research collaboration between the University of Oslo (UiO) and the University of Western Cape to strengthen the national health system through digital technology. Since that time, he has been instrumental in the action research that continues to inform the development and implementation of DHIS v1 and DHIS2.

Dr. Kristin Braa is the director of the HISP Centre at UiO, which is the home to the DHIS2 project. She got her PhD from the Department of Informatics in 1995, where she then became Professor in 2000. Following a stint in the private sector, she returned to the University of Oslo in 2009, and has led HISP and DHIS2 since then.

In addition to the financial support from the University of Oslo, the HISP Centre’s research is funded by a network of international partners, including the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), Gavi, the Global Fund, the US CDC, PEPFAR, the Gates Foundation, Unicef, the WHO, and Wellcome.

The AIS Impact Award ceremony was held during the 2023 ICIS Conference in Hyderabad. During the ceremony, Associate Professor Silvia Masiero of the HISP Centre was also recognized with the 2023 AIS Mid-Career Award for her outstanding research, teaching and service contribution to the field of information systems. We congratulate Kristin, Jørn and Silvia on these awards, and wish to thank all who have contributed and collaborated with HISP on the research, development, and implementation of DHIS2 around the world.