I. Introduction Following the Alma-Ata declaration on Health for All by year 2000, many developing countries have formulated policies for action to launch Primary Health Care program. Primary health crae is essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self-determination. It forms an integral part both of the country`s health system, of which it is the central function and main focus, and of the overall social and economic development of the community. It is the first level of con-tact of individuals, the family and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work, and constitutes the first element of a continuing health care process.<sup>1)</sup> Health is an essential element of socio-economic development policy in Korea. According to our constitution, it has stressed the importance of expanding the ac-cessibility of health care services. However, the organization of health care delivery is noticeably underdeveloped in Korea.<sup>2)</sup> The current health care system is far from being an integrated system in which needs and allocation of resources are closely coordinated. The bulk of health services are supplied through the mechanism of the free market. The expansion of the health care delivery capacity in the pst has relied almost entirely on increasing hospital beds in the private sector. In order to strengthen the public medical services, the Ministry Plans to renovate facilities and equipment in city and provincial hospitals and health centers and sub-centers which play a central role in providing primary care.<sup>3)</sup> The importance of health information system, in order to plan, implement, control and evaluate primary health program is nowadays accepted by all. Effort have been made in many countries to improve and adapt the existing health information to the needs. II. Community Health Information System Relevant community health information comes from two parts, population and health services. The element derived from these two parts lead to the knowledge of ex-isting situation, desired situation, needed interventions, performed activities. However, information system itself does not provide solutions for community health problem but it assist in their adequate selection of strategies. Community health information system is useful for 1) monitoring individual and family care, 2) identifying and understanding the health problems of community, 3) planning and operating the necessary services, and 4) evaluating services and impact. Development and implementation of primary health care activities must be preceded by a careful diagnosis of the problems and assessment of what is needed and what is fasible at the community level. Through the development of information system, it is necessary to know about the real and perceived health care needs. Health information system is needed for a clear formulation of development policies and strategies. To take into account the contribution of other sectors to attain the goals and to determine clear objectives within the context of primary health care policies, relevant information col-lection system should be developed. It is essential to improve managing and operating of primary health care activities through periodical observation on selected activities and comparision of expected and observed values. Therefore, in order to design the primary health care component of any health care delivery system, at least four groups of activities have to be carried out: 1) determination of areas of responsibility of each community health worker, 2) local programming of activities, 3) registration, processing and reporting of activities per-formed, and 4) supervision, monitoring and control. Since supervision, monitoring and control function is feasible through the existence of an information system, the meaning assigned to each one of them is following: supervision is an activity of inservice training aimed at maintaining or improving the pre-established standards on selected actions. It is a teaching activity with direct and personal relationship between trainer and trainee, in which with a higher degree of knowledge reorient the actions of each member of health worker. Monitoring is a process of periodical observation of selected activities, in which ex-pected and observed values are compared in order to assure a smooth evolution of the project. If discrepancies of practical value are detected between programmed and per-formed activities, then it is necessary to identify the responsible causes in order to better orient the managerial decision making process of the program. Control action is an activity performed by a decision-maker aimed at modifying the course of certain operations of the system or the magnitude and/or type of its inputs. Its objective is to assure that the observed values be equivalent to the programmed ones. III. Factors Included in Information System Development Appropriate organization for selecting, recording, reporting, processing, and using the information for the health and related services are the most important element in the design of primary health care information system. Mechanisms to coordinate the areas of planning, programming, management and other services should be established. Permanent enquiries by the community health workers and regular activities of health services, stimulation and motivation, contacts between health workers and health services at higher echelon are relevant factors for the improvement of the mechanisms of information system. Another aspect of information system is process of accessing needs and deciding about content of information system. To be an effective information system the follow-ing problems should be reflected into the information system. 1) Basis for decision about information content - objectives, targets, milestones, activities ... 2) Dialogue between users and producers in order to determine the appropriateness on the feasibility in the procedure of accomplishing the content of the information system. 3) Data collected should be relevant. 4) Information collected at the local level should reflect the important tasks and ac-tivities undertaken or that level. 5) Information on the activities of other organizations at community level. In primary health care, as it exists in many countries, it has been necessary to train lay persons to serve as providers of care. These persons are practically trained in disease recognition and care procedures. Nevertheless, they lack training in the systematic health and medical sciences and their range of competence in medical and health semantics is limited and the range of problems they treat is also limited. For the use of such persons, it may be desirable to develop and abridged or condensed version of a large classification, coding scheme for the development of a good functional health information system. In primary health care information system. there are six principal sources of inform-tion: 1) Records - resulting from the community health worker`s enquiries - resulting from the activities of health personnel and local health team and established according to their functions. 2) Home-based records (e.g. family sheets). 3) Reports on work formed. 4) Surveys (for community purposes). 5) Registers for primary health care activities. and 6) Ad-hoc reporting of emergency problems For the processing and use of information, particularly the following topics should be considered: 1) To promote effective use of information bv health workers and community at the local level. 2) Use of records as a basis for the delivery of health services. 3) Processing of information to be used by next higher echelon of monitoring and super-vision and information to be forwarded to higher echelons according to needs. 4) Analytical review - health status, health servides delivered, main health problems detected, types and quantities of resources supplied and needed, work performed, manpower requirements. 5) Presentation of information in forms which are usable by decision, and 6) Decisions for the solution of the problems that can be dealt with locally. Increasing effort has been devoted to management of record system. A first step in planning a record system is to document answers to the following questions. 1) Who are the users: For example, primary health worker (PHW). PHW supervisor. 2) What types of decisions need to be made and with what frequency? For example, the PHW shold decide each time a child is seen whether growth and development are satisfactory. PHW supervisor may need to know on monthly basis if children are be-ing followed as scheduled. 3) What data elements must be entered to produce the information? For example, weight, weight-age standard, visits programmed, visits accomplished. 4) What is the sources of the data and how are they to be collected? Finally, feed-back is one of the most important element in the development of infor-mation system. Feed-back should reflect real progress and impact on problems in achieving local primary health care goals and its should be provided with adequate con-tent in an appropriate form at proper time and level of decision.