Meeting on secondary use of health data

Meeting on secondary use of health data unknown

WHO/Europe and the Danish Health Data Authority are holding a 1-day hybrid meeting on 13 December focusing on the secondary use of health data and data quality. The meeting will explore countries’ efforts and initiatives to assess, describe, report on and improve their health information systems and data quality.

Secondary use of data

Secondary use of health data is the processing of health data for purposes other than the initial purposes for which the data were collected. An example of this is when researchers re-process clinical and health insurance data to investigate the cost-effectiveness of a service or product. Secondary use of health data, including data on various determinants of health, provides an important resource for decision-making, health system management and improvement, and research. With the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data in health care and the adoption of AI-powered solutions, there is an increasing demand for primary and secondary health data from traditional sources such as electronic health records and non-traditional sources like social media.

The meeting

WHO/Europe is providing technical support to countries to strengthen their health data and information systems. This meeting will bring together policy-makers and professionals from several countries working on public health data and health information systems to present good practices and relevant experiences in the secondary use of health data.

At the meeting, WHO/Europe will present the recently adopted Regional Digital Health Action Plan for the WHO European Region 2023–2030, which outlines the strategic actions needed to promote digital health systems to improve health at scale in the Region, and to ensure synergies with partner organizations and alignment with global efforts to standardize digital health adoption.

The European Commission’s European Health Data Space (EHDS) will also be discussed. As a governance, legal and interoperability framework, the EHDS will play a pivotal role in health information exchange, and data sharing and re-use across European Union member states – to improve data-informed policy-making and research.

Challenges

Accessing and re-using existing health data can substantially reduce the cost and time for conducting analysis for research or planning purposes. However, the WHO health information system assessments across Member States of the WHO European Region have revealed obstacles in sharing and using health data, and consequently, the production of health statistics as a result of data protection frameworks that are not appropriately geared to enable secondary use of health data. Furthermore, the increasing volume, complexity and diversity of the health data collected and used by different stakeholders highlights a need for internationally recognized principles, standards, guidelines and methods to assess, describe and report data quality.

This discussion on the secondary use of health data and data quality aims to strengthen country capacity for data processing and innovation and will contribute to the lessons learned to better prepare health systems now and in the future – a priority area of focus identified in WHO’s European Programme of Work 2020–2025.