Title: Purpose of the Provider Registry
Course: RHEA Provider Registry > Section: Purpose of the Provider Registry

Rwanda Health Entrerprise Architecture

The Rwanda Health Entrerprise Architecture (RHEA) initiative seeks to define, develop and implement a health enterprise architecture for Rwanda.

The first phase is focused on the maternal healthcare domain, and the main objectives are to:

1. Complete an Implementation Science/Research Project to present the impact of a Health Information Exchange (HIE) on the maternal healthcare delivery system in Rwanda
2. To develop a pilot implementation Health Information Exchange (HIE) in Rwanda focused on the maternal health care system in Rwanda.
3. Expand the understanding of HIE in Rwanda within the health delivery system and the technical community.

Role of the Provider Registry

The Provider Registry maintains a list of all health care providers in Rwanda.

This registry is used to validate information before it enters the shared health record.

Who is a provider?

One of the main purposes of the provider registry is to validate HL7 messages coming from point of care applications such as RapidSMS and OpenMRS.

A provider should therefore include anyone that will generate one of these messages.  These include:

- Paid-Public Sector Employees working at a health facility
- Students, interns or volunteers working at a health facility
- Community Health Workers providing health information via a mobile phone

This is the list of "Provider Types" that we will see in the Provider Registry User Interface

What provider information do we need?

When a HL7 message comes into the interoperability layer, it comes with the National ID of the provider.

The provider registry verifies for the Health Interoperability Layer that there is really a provider with that National ID.

Thus, for the purposes of the HIE, there is only one piece of information that we need about the provider, that National ID.

However, as we need to maintain the list of providers, it would be useful to have other information about the providers:

- Their name
- Where they work
- The type of provider that they are
- Their cadre or job classification
- National ID (and other IDs)
- Nationality
- Are they still practicing?
- Certification
- Links to HRHIS or professinal council systems
- email address
- cell phone number

What about volunteers and interns who are not from Rwanda?

Where do we get provider information?

There are several sources of currently available data for providers:

- The Rwanda HRIS maintains a list of all paid public sector providers
- RapidSMS provides a data source for the community health workers

Is the data complete?

This information is not complete -- there are gaps!

- We don't have a good source of data on students and interns
- Many of the employees entered into the HRIS have invalid of missing National IDs
- Private Sector

Even if these gaps were filled, we will always have new providers.

It may take some time for new formal employees to be registered into the HRIS.