Health care delivery, resource allocation and research are severely impaired without the support of good data, good quality of indicators and studies, and therefore without decisions regarding the planning and evaluating of preventive programmes.

 

Quality involves different dimensions: relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, comparability and coherence. These dimensions are relevant for the use of primary data (HIS- health interview survey, HES-health examination survey, population based registries) and secondary data (administrative data).

 

Within the European project BRIDGE Health (Bridging Information and Data Generation for Evidence based Health Policy and Research), the leadership of the Horizontal Activity HA 5 (Data quality methods including internal and external validation of indicators) was assigned to Istituto Superiore di Sanità.

 

This HA aimed at:

• identifying quality assessment methods in data collection/data sources among previous and running European Projects; identifying quality assessment methods in data processing from different sources to assess indicators
• creating an overview of health information areas where quality issues are faced
• stimulating the creation of an expert’s network on quality methods supporting the NCD (non communicable diseases) Health Information System across Europe
• creating the basis for future public health policies on surveillance in all European countries.

The Horizontal Activity 5 report, based on experiences and good practices developed by experts within different European Projects, provides a detailed description of quality methods and checks used to assess quality data. It may help to harmonize databases from different data sources, contributing to build an integrate, sustainable and comprehensive European (EU) health information system.

 

Download and consult the report “HA5- Data Quality Methods” (pdf 1 Mb).