Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Case Reports
. 2023 Mar 29;23(1):17.
doi: 10.5334/ijic.6953. eCollection 2023 Jan-Mar.

Drilling for 'New Oil' in Care Integration - Co-Production of the Concept and Specification of an Integrated Data Centre for Policy Decision Making, Care Planning, and Research in Estonia

Ingo Meyer  1 , Gerli Aavik-Märtmaa  2 , Adriana Poppe  1 , Sonja Müller  3 , Leo Lewis  4 , Andrew Terris  4 , Doris Kaljuste  2 , Marion Rummo  5 , Kadri Rootalu  6 , Marko Bucik  7
Affiliations
Case Reports

Drilling for 'New Oil' in Care Integration - Co-Production of the Concept and Specification of an Integrated Data Centre for Policy Decision Making, Care Planning, and Research in Estonia

Ingo Meyer et al. Int J Integr Care. .

Abstract

Introduction: Care integration needs to take place on different levels, including that of infrastructure and especially data infrastructure. Only integrated data allow for policy making, care planning, research, and evaluation that spans across different sectors of care and support.

Methods: In the course of an EU-funded reform initiative on integrated care, the Estonian government and various agencies have developed a concept for an integrated data centre, bringing together information from social, medical, and vocational support services. The concept was developed in co-production with many stakeholders. A test data set from all covered sectors, including the pseudonymised data of 17,945 citizens of an Estonian municipality, was created and analysed as a proof-of-concept exercise.

Results: The co-production approach resulted in a set of requirements and use cases as well as a specification of premises, processes, and data flows for the data centre. The analysis of the test dataset showed the principal feasibility of the dataset for the intended purposes.

Conclusion: The concept development phase showed that an integrated data centre for Estonia is feasible per se and helped to specify concrete actions required for its realisation. Strategic and financial decisions from the Estonian Reform Steering Committee are now needed to create the data centre.

Keywords: data centre; data integration; evidence-based decision making; integrated care; population health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The initiative received funding from the Technical Support Instrument of the European Commission.

Figures

Figure showing how one body of data can be used to serve three different purposes: policy formulation and decision making, integrated service models and research and evaluation. Only the first and third purpose is addressed by the data center
Figure 1
Potential purposes of an integrated data system.
Plausibility checks for health data covering basic counts of rows in different tables, check of coded data and check of coded monetary values
Figure 2
Three steps of plausibility and quality checks.
Dataflow starting from a data request by an data user, being passed on to different data owners, who then produce datasets specific to the request. These are linked at the data center and made available to the data user for analysis
Figure 3
Process and data flow integrated data centre.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. The Economist. The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data; 2017. [cited 2020 Dec 17]. Available from: URL: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most-valuable-re....
    1. Guyatt G, Cairns J, Churchill D, Cook D, Haynes B, Hirsh J. Evidence-based medicine. A new approach to teaching the practice of medicine. JAMA. 1992; 268(17): 2420–5. DOI: 10.1001/jama.1992.03490170092032 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Dobrow MJ, Goel V, Upshur R. Evidence-based health policy: context and utilisation. Social Science & Medicine. 2004; 58(1): 207–17. DOI: 10.1016/S0277-9536(03)00166-7 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Harrison MI, Shortell SM. Multi-level analysis of the learning health system: Integrating contributions from research on organizations and implementation. Learning Health Systems. 2021; 5(2): e10226. Available from: URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lrh2.10226. DOI: 10.1002/lrh2.10226 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Council of the European Union. Council conclusion on the Reflection process on modern, responsive and sustainable systems; 2013. [cited 2021 Mar 4]. Available from: URL: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/lsa/140....

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources