Background: The 2016 information revolution agenda of the Ethiopian Health Sector transformation plan calls for a fundamental shift on the way health information is collected and used for decision. Responding to this call the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) established a National Data Management Center for health (NDMC) in July 2017, to create a national repository system for health and health related data, to facilitate ethical data sharing, data integration, rigorous analysis and generating evidence for policy and action.

Objective: To share experiences, challenges and lessons learned in establishing NDMC.

Activities: NDMC was launched with defined mission and goals under the leadership of EPHI and Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH). NDMC is a flagship initiative focusing on capacity building, creating a system for data mapping, archiving, banking and sharing; estimating national and sub-national disease burden, evaluating disease control priorities and monitoring health sector and sustainable development goals progress. NDMC did comprehensive mapping and inventory of data generated within EPHI. According to the findings, EPHI lack central system to archive, access and lack a coordinated share data and the data management practice. Most research data were stored in personal computers. Majority of the researchers at EPHI assumed they were sole owners of data’s and were skeptical to submit data to central repository. Ignorance of institutional and public ownership of data appeared pervasive. NDMC has conducted consultative meetings with senior researchers from EPHI, Universities and other stakeholder to create awareness about the center and to facilitate archiving of research and surveillance data to central repository. Moreover, NDMC has been developing guidelines and frameworks for data sharing, data security, data organization and analysis and authorship contribution considering national and international ethical and scientific standards. Currently, the center is working in collaboration with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) to support evidence informed health decision at national and sub-national levels on burden of disease, injury and risk factors.

Lesson learned: It is possible to improve existing poor research data archiving and sharing culture and data for action practices. The experience and challenges within EPHI found to be important for scaling up national implementation. Collaborations with local and international partners have been key for capacity building of the center.

Conclusion: The establishment of NDMC was challenging but possible through the coordinated efforts from EPHI, FMoH, Universities and other stakeholders. NDMC took the heavy burden of realizing the vision to create national research data repository in line with the national information revolution road map. Creating such central repository and evidence synthesis system is crucial to profit from health research investments and to advance data for action initiatives. Human resource capacity with multi-disciplinary competency is critical for full scale implementation. NDMC intends to establish systems to reach out Universities, research institutes and consulting firms engaged in health research in Ethiopia for countrywide data mapping, inventory and archiving of retrospective and prospective data. For prospective data archiving, NDMC is currently working with FMoH on draft Health Act and national data sharing policy mechanisms.