Data Quality in Health Research: Integrative Literature Review

BACKGROUND

Decision-making and strategies to improve service delivery must be supported by reliable health data to generate consistent evidence on health status. The data quality management process must ensure the reliability of collected data. Consequently, various methodologies to improve the quality of services are applied in the health field. At the same time, scientific research is constantly evolving to improve data quality through better reproducibility and empowerment of researchers and offers patient groups tools for secured data sharing and privacy compliance.

OBJECTIVE

Through an integrative literature review, the aim of this work was to identify and evaluate digital health technology interventions designed to support the conducting of health research based on data quality.

METHODS

A search was conducted in 6 electronic scientific databases in January 2022: PubMed, SCOPUS, Web of Science, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Digital Library, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist and flowchart were used to visualize the search strategy results in the databases.

RESULTS

After analyzing and extracting the outcomes of interest, 33 papers were included in the review. The studies covered the period of 2017-2021 and were conducted in 22 countries. Key findings revealed variability and a lack of consensus in assessing data quality domains and metrics. Data quality factors included the research environment, application time, and development steps. Strategies for improving data quality involved using business intelligence models, statistical analyses, data mining techniques, and qualitative approaches.

CONCLUSIONS

The main barriers to health data quality are technical, motivational, economical, political, legal, ethical, organizational, human resources, and methodological. The data quality process and techniques, from precollection to gathering, postcollection, and analysis, are critical for the final result of a study or the quality of processes and decision-making in a health care organization. The findings highlight the need for standardized practices and collaborative efforts to enhance data quality in health research. Finally, context guides decisions regarding data quality strategies and techniques.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

RR2-10.1101/2022.05.31.22275804.

Information-Driven Integrated Healthcare: An Analysis of the Cooperation Strategy of County Medical Community Based on Multi-Subject Simulation

The fragmentation and uneven quality of primary medical resources in China call for a deepening of integrated healthcare reform. China is promoting its county medical community (CMC) reform on a large scale in county-level administrative regions to promote the integration of local primary healthcare systems through information technology, which is consistent with the current trend of the digital governance era. Considering that the construction of a county medical community involves collaborative relationships between multi-level subjects, the evolutionary game theory was adopted in this study to construct a game model between the lead hospital of a CMC and primary healthcare institutions, and then the incentives of government department support were introduced to analyze the behavioral evolution of these three subjects. Taking into account the uncertainty of the real-life environment and information transformation, white Gaussian noise was introduced as a random disturbance term, and a numerical simulation was performed. In the two-subject model we focus on four parameters: information and management authority ceded by the primary healthcare institutions, integration coefficient of CMC information construction, intensity factor of information integration in the CMC, and medical resources delivered by the lead hospital. In the three-subject model we focus on three parameters: information and portion of authority ceded by the primary healthcare institutions and government departments, policy effect coefficient of CMC construction, and intensity of government departments' support for CMC construction. The simulation results show that there is a positive incentive for the concession of management power and information from the primary healthcare institutions to the lead hospital, but further determination of empowerment boundaries is needed. The lead hospital can improve the balance of medical resources in the county through the downward transfer of medical resources, but long-term resource delivery may inhibit the enthusiasm of the lead hospital. An improvement in the information integration intensity of the CMC can promote the efficient flow of information and knowledge and enhance the organizational closeness of the county medical community. At the same time, the integration of CMC information construction reduces the cost of collaboration among medical community members and streamlines and consolidates business modules, which can promote more efficient use of medical resources. The government departments' policies and funds provide obvious incentives to the lead hospital and primary healthcare institutions, but there is a need to explore appropriate financial payment ratios to balance the government's financial pressure.

China's "dynamic clearing" epidemic prevention policy: Achievements, challenges, and prospects

The COVID-19 outbreak makes up a major public health emergency, and each country has adopted different epidemic prevention policies and measures. Since the control of COVID-19 in 2020, China has gradually developed a "Dynamic Clearing" epidemic prevention policy of "external input prevention and internal rebound prevention". The policy has been effective in protecting people's lives and health and developing the country's economy as much as possible, but it has also faced some challenges, such as slowing economic development, huge prevention, and control costs, and expanding secondary disasters and risks. Reviewing China's current "dynamic clearing" policy, it is still the overall policy to continuously improve guiding policies, construct scientific prevention measures, and promote digital governance at the grassroots level.

A Crisis of Governance - Or an Opportunity?

The National Health Service Track and Trace Programme has been one of the most pivotal and controversial tools the UK government has deployed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This article reviews the challenges of the development and implementation of the NHS COVID-19 mobile application, and reviews these in the context of the following 3 key areas: outsourcing of public sector, organisational structure and leadership, digital framework and governance. The paper argues that the current pandemic has demonstrated weaknesses in each of the above-mentioned areas, and that is an urgent need to strategically address these in order to prepare for the next public health crisis.

Taiwan’s COVID‐19 Management: Developmental State, Digital Governance, and State‐Society Synergy

This article examines the reasons behind Taiwan’s effective COVID‐19 response. While some have argued that Taiwan’s success with COVID‐19 is based on its experience with SARS, I argue that we should not attribute Taiwan’s effective response solely to its SARS experience. The country’s success mainly lies in three factors: (1) reliance on the mask policy as the main disease prevention measure and the ability to quickly expand mask production capacity; (2) use of big data and technology to enhance effective implementation of disease prevention and detection measures; and (3) strong state‐society relations favoring transparency, communication, and collaboration. The first two factors can trace their roots to the country’s developmental state model. Democracy provides the institutional underpinning for a vibrant civil society and the synergy between state and civil society, strengthening Taiwan’s crisis governance legitimacy and increasing citizens’ voluntary compliance.

Platforms of Work, Labour, and Employment Relationship: The Grey Zones of a Digital Governance

Drawing on numerous case studies, the article examines the specific conditions for organising and managing the employment relationship on digital labour platforms. We show that these conditions are largely due to the disruptive nature of the process of digitising the employee-employer relationship. Digitisation replaces the employment contract of the standard employment relationship with a triangular "worker-platform-customer" relationship. In this model, the boundaries of the employment relationship become opaque and more uncertain: the bond of subordination disappears, labour law gives way to commercial law, and the figures of the employer and the employee lose institutional visibility. The article seeks to clarify the contours of this "in-between" model and proposes the notion of the "grey zone," borrowed from geopolitics. This notion of the "employment grey zone" makes it possible to shift the researcher's perspective by focusing attention on practices and "intermediate spaces of regulation," which are relatively autonomous and endowed with their own dynamics. This framework of analysis broadens the perspective and helps to better understand the impact on the employment relationship of new forms of governance in a context of a digital turning point. The article first returns to the notion of the "grey zone" and argues on the foundations and interest of mobilising this notion in the field of industrial relations studies. The links between digital platforms and grey zones are then examined. In particular, we show that digital governance is based on a confusion of powers between coordination and leadership. The reflection continues in a third phase with an examination of digital management practices in two areas: the control of the activity of connected workers, and the production and management of externalities resulting from the operation of platforms. The article concludes with a discussion on the heuristic value of the notion of grey zones of employment.