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Abstract:
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Electronic health databases, including electronic medical records, administrative records, and clinical registries, are a rich resource for conducting policy-relevant research. But are the data fit for their planned uses? Many electronic health databases were developed for patient care and treatment or health system administration and management, and were never intended to be used for research. Moreover, challenges can arise when investigating the fitness of electronic health data for research, including a lack of funding to undertake these studies, limited methodological expertise amongst data users to address issues of less-than-optimal data quality, and limited documentation about database content and structure, which may hinder data quality studies. At this roundtable, we will discuss: (a) methods to assess the accuracy, completeness, and comparability of electronic health data, (b) new opportunities in this field of research, and (c) contribute to recommending a set of best practices for describing and documenting quality of electronic health databases.
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