Our HI research and innovation activities are organised around five broad themes, applicable to clinical medicine, biomedical sciences, public health, and global health. Each theme is anchored at Makerere University, co-designed with the people who'll use the results, and translated into the systems, policies, and practice that improve health outcomes.
Research themes
Our Research
Five research themes — across clinical medicine, biomedical sciences, public health, and global health
Research themes
From data and AI to standards, surveillance, economics, and policy translation
HIRI's portfolio spans the full health informatics value chain. Use the cards below to jump to any theme; full descriptions follow.
01 — Health Data Science & AI/ML
Diagnosis, prediction, personalised care, and operational efficiency
02 — Interoperability, Standards & Data Governance
Integrated, shareable digital health data systems
03 — Digital Health Surveillance
Disease control, epidemic preparedness, One Health
04 — Health Economics, Costing & Impact
Cost-effectiveness, ROI, sustainability, and evaluation
05 — Knowledge Translation & Policy
Turning evidence into decisions, programmes, and impact
Theme 01
Health Data Science and Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
For health research, disease diagnosis and prediction, personalised medicine and treatment plans, predictive analytics for patient outcomes, and operational efficiency improvement.
Disease diagnosis & prediction
Machine learning for earlier and more accurate diagnosis, risk stratification, and clinical decision support.
Personalised medicine
Tailoring treatment plans to patient-level features, evidence, and outcomes data.
Operational efficiency
Predictive analytics to improve patient flow, resource utilisation, and health service delivery.
Theme 02
Digital Health Interoperability, Standards and Data Governance
Development and evaluation of integrated and interoperable, standardised digital health data systems — terminology, data and interoperability standards, and data governance — for data capture, analytics, and sharing toward shared evidence.
Terminology & data standards
Adoption and evaluation of clinical terminology and interoperability standards across Uganda's digital health landscape.
Integrated data systems
Linking and harmonising health data across facilities, programmes, and registries for shared evidence.
Data governance
Policy, privacy, and stewardship frameworks for trusted capture, analytics, and sharing.
Theme 03
Digital Health Surveillance
Passive, active, syndromic, and One Health surveillance for disease control, epidemic preparedness and response, and global health threats — for endemic and pandemic-potential infectious (emerging and re-emerging) diseases.
Passive, active & syndromic surveillance
Detecting and tracking endemic and emerging diseases through routine, sentinel, and event-based systems.
One Health surveillance
Joint human, animal, and environmental health surveillance for zoonotic and pandemic-potential threats.
Epidemic preparedness & response
Strengthening the data infrastructure that powers early warning, response coordination, and global health security.
Theme 04
Digital Health Economics, Costing and Impact Evaluation
Costing and cost-effectiveness, return on investment for scaling, sustainability and resilience, and impact evaluation of digital health interventions for improved health outcomes and impact.
Costing & cost-effectiveness
Quantifying the cost and value of digital health interventions at facility, programme, and national levels.
Return on investment for scaling
Evidence to support sustainability, resilience, and decisions about which solutions to scale and where.
Impact evaluation
Measuring whether digital health interventions actually improve outcomes — and for whom.
Theme 05
Digital Knowledge Translation and Evidence-Informed Policy-making
Turning research health data into health information and knowledge to strengthen the use of evidence in policy- and decision-making, reprogramming of resources, and programmatic planning for real health impacts and improved health service delivery.
Evidence-informed policy
Translating research findings into briefs, recommendations, and decisions that move the policy table.
Programmatic planning
Supporting reprogramming of resources and planning grounded in real-world health data.
Improved service delivery
From research data to health information to knowledge — and on to the systems that deliver care.
Integrated across every theme
Co-design, capacity, and change management
Co-designing with users, capacity development and training, and change management are integrated across all research-project themes — for policy- and decision-makers, healthcare professionals and workers, scientists and researchers, patients, and the community.
Research projects
See HIRI's active and completed research projects
Each project sits within one or more of the five themes — from interoperable AMR surveillance to costing studies of national digital health platforms. Browse the full portfolio to see what we're working on right now and what we've delivered.