title: Improving health aid for a better planet: The planning, monitoring and evaluation tool (PLANET).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  International development assistance for health (DAH) quadrupled between 1990 and 2012, from US$ 5.6 billion to US$ 28.1 billion. This generates an increasing need for transparent and replicable tools that could be used to set investment priorities, monitor the distribution of funding in real time, and evaluate the impact of those investments.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this paper we present a methodology that addresses these three challenges. We call this approach PLANET, which stands for planning, monitoring and evaluation tool. Fundamentally, PLANET is based on crowdsourcing approach to obtaining information relevant to deployment of large-scale programs. Information is contributed in real time by a diverse group of participants involved in the program delivery.
  
  
  RESULTS
  PLANET relies on real-time information from three levels of participants in large-scale programs: funders, managers and recipients. At each level, information is solicited to assess five key risks that are most relevant to each level of operations. The risks at the level of funders involve systematic neglect of certain areas, focus on donor's interests over that of program recipients, ineffective co-ordination between donors, questionable mechanisms of delivery and excessive loss of funding to "middle men". At the level of managers, the risks are corruption, lack of capacity and/or competence, lack of information and /or communication, undue avoidance of governmental structures / preference to non-governmental organizations and exclusion of local expertise. At the level of primary recipients, the risks are corruption, parallel operations / "verticalization", misalignment with local priorities and lack of community involvement, issues with ethics, equity and/or acceptability, and low likelihood of sustainability beyond the end of the program's implementation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  PLANET is intended as an additional tool available to policy-makers to prioritize, monitor and evaluate large-scale development programs. In this, it should complement tools such as LiST (for health care/interventions), EQUIST (for health care/interventions) and CHNRI (for health research), which also rely on information from local experts and on local context to set priorities in a transparent, user-friendly, replicable, quantifiable and specific, algorithmic-like manner.
authors: Centre for Global Health Research, The Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK ; World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Population Health Research and Training, The University of Edinburgh, UK.
authors: Devi
authors: D
authors: Sridhar
authors: Health Services and Outcomes Research Programme, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore ; Global eHealth Unit, Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: Josip
authors: J
authors: Car
authors: UNICEF, New York, USA.
authors: Mickey
authors: M
authors: Chopra
authors: Centre for Global Health Research, The Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK ; World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Population Health Research and Training, The University of Edinburgh, UK.
authors: Harry
authors: H
authors: Campbell
authors: Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
authors: Ngaire
authors: N
authors: Woods
authors: Centre for Global Health Research, The Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK ; World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Population Health Research and Training, The University of Edinburgh, UK.
authors: Igor
authors: I
authors: Rudan