Jakarta – Indonesia’s Ministry of Health and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today recognized the critical role of health offices, workers, and innovators in implementing the Electronic Immunization and Logistics Monitoring System or Sistem Monitoring Imunisasi dan Logistik secara Elektronik (SMILE) to succeed the country’s immunization drive.
Four health offices from Pekanbaru, South Tangerang, Bogor, and Jakarta received awards of recognition, while five health professionals from Papua, East Kalimantan, Central Java, Maluku, and Riau Islands received recognition for digital health transformation. Seven digital innovators at the MoH also received awards of recognition.
The awards were handed out during an event on August 8, 2022 which highlighted SMILE’s role in accelerating Indonesia’s digital health transformation. The event acknowledged the digitizing of the immunization program initiated by the Ministry of Health and UNDP through SMILE which was enhanced during the COVID-19 vaccination in 2020.
SMILE is an innovative platform that allows vaccine managers to instantly monitor vaccine inventory and storage temperature remotely, using digital technology on mobile phone and web application. The SMILE system has proved to be robust and reliable during the COVID-19 pandemic and lays a solid foundation for Ministry of Health to expand use of the application to manage supply chains of all vaccines and logistics across Indonesia.
More than 420 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine were distributed to 12,000 health facilities across the archipelago via the SMILE digital application. SMILE is currently used in conjunction with the government’s Aplikasi Sehat Indonesiaku (ASIK) system used by the Ministry of Health, to ensure efficient and timely delivery of routine vaccines.
UNDP Indonesia Resident Representative a.i. Nicholas Booth praised the role of health workers in using SMILE to track down the delivery of vaccines throughout Indonesia, a vast archipelagic nation spanning three time zones.
“The SMILE application allowed us to reach remote areas across the archipelago, including areas where connectivity was a challenge. It enabled women in the healthcare field —70 percent of whom are women — to enhance their skills and deliver critical healthcare more accurately,†said Mr. Booth.
Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, the Director General of Disease Prevention and Control at the Ministry of Health noted the significant contribution of vaccine managers, vaccinators, and health offices to the effort. “It is satisfying to see the impressive progress and results shown by the Electronic Immunization and Logistics Monitoring System ), a system that we initiated in partnership with UNDP, and with the support from GAVI. SMILE is successfully implemented for both routine immunization and COVID-19 vaccination. Strengthening the routine immunization data system, efforts to expand resources and coverage are important to minimize the occurrence of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,†Rondonuwu said.
The SMILE initiative was developed with financial support from GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance. SMILE’s objective is in line with GAVI’s global mission to sustain high immunization coverage and ensure equal access to life-saving vaccines. GAVI supported the enhancement and expansion of SMILE in Indonesia under GAVI Post Transition Engagement to 12 provinces in routine immunization in 2021. Within less than four years, SMILE has been scaled up nationally to over 12,000 healthcare centers across 34 provinces.
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Media Contacts
UNDP Indonesia, SMILE Project Manager, Vidia Darmawi vidia@undp.org
UNDP Indonesia, Communication Specialist, Tomi Soetjipto suryo.tomi@undp.org