NEST360 Small and Sick Newborn Care Dashboard
The NEST360 Implementation Tracker (NEST-IT) dashboard is an open-source data platform designed to support the improvement of care for small and sick newborns by turning routine clinical and hospital data into actionable insights for decision-makers at every level of the health system. Designed for impact, the dashboard enables clinicians, hospital managers, and ministries of health to monitor performance, identify gaps, and drive quality improvement across a diverse set of indicators.
Supporting decisions across the health system
NEST-IT is designed to be useful at multiple levels of the health system:
- Facility level: clinical teams and neonatal units track performance, review trends over time, and identify priorities for quality improvement.
- Sub-national level: regional health leaders can compare facilities, identify high-performing sites, and target support where it is most needed.
- National level: ministries of health can monitor progress against national newborn health priorities and track implementation across hospitals.
- Multi-country level: countries and global partners can benchmark progress and learn from each other.
- Program level: partners and implementing programs can follow indicators related to implementation, infrastructure, and capacity.
Figure 1: NEST-IT supports data use across the health system
Indicators designed for impact
The dashboard brings together a diverse set of indicators selected for impact, combining:
- Clinical indicators related to care processes and outcomes for small and sick newborns
- Contextual indicators, such as infrastructure, medical equipment availability, and human resources
- Implementation indicators such as data completeness and data entry delays
Together, these measures provide a more complete view of the conditions required to deliver high-quality newborn care.
To support consistent definitions of indicators, interpretation and use of the data, we provide a detailed indicator guide that describes each metric included in the dashboard. The guide outlines indicator definitions, numerators and denominators and can serve as a foundation for other small and sick newborn care dashboards.
Figure 2: NEST-IT includes a diverse set of indicators to provide a holistic overview of small and sick newborn care
Tracking progress and benchmarking performance
NEST-IT allows users to:
- Visualize trends over time
- Track progress towards targets
- Benchmark performance across facilities, regions, and countries
By presenting data in an accessible and interactive format, the dashboard supports regular data review and evidence-based decision-making.
Open source, adaptable, and scalable
NEST-IT is designed to be flexible and adaptable to different country contexts. The platform:
- Is open source, with code available for adaptation and reuse
- Can be localized and rebranded for national programs
- Can be hosted on local servers and sit on top of multiple data sources, including electronic medical records or systems such as DHIS2
- Can scale from individual hospitals to national or multi-country deployments
The dashboard can also be extended to incorporate maternal indicators through MAMA‑NEST‑IT, supporting analysis of the maternal–newborn dyad and strengthening links between maternal and newborn care, as well as preventing stillbirths.
Current implementation
The NEST-IT dashboard is currently implemented in more than 100 hospitals across five countries, supporting routine data use for quality improvement and program monitoring. In Ethiopia, a localized version of the platform has been adapted and deployed across over 200 hospitals with data hosted by the Ministry of Health, demonstrating its potential for national scale.
Collaborate with us
We are committed to supporting partners and governments interested in adapting the platform for their own contexts. Our team is happy to share the code, share our indicator guide, discuss implementation approaches, and collaborate on localization and scale-up.
If you are interested in learning more about how the NEST-IT dashboard can support newborn care data systems, we welcome you to connect with us. Please contact info@nest360.org for more information.