Aggregating data and building national E-Health services and systems will have limited impact without a focus on data quality. This attention begins with establishing a national Data Quality program based on a robust and comprehensive framework, supported by education and training of the workforce, and by implementing feedback mechanisms to ensure continual improvement. Making decisions on data of dubious quality can lead to healthcare expenses that may have little to no effect, in some extreme cases, negative impact on the patient population. It has been estimated, for example, that up to 4% of hospital visits can be avoided by enhancing best practices, data quality and guidelines in the outpatient settings.
An emphasis on standardized coded data will also enable decision support and enhanced data analytics services to help direct funding to areas of national importance and priority, measuring effectiveness of programs to deal with each condition. Literature studies suggest, for example, that data-based decision support systems for diabetes can lead to 20% reduced costs.
Quality data will also be a fundamental requisite for the establishment of advanced data analytics capabilities in the MOPH, supporting the creation of a Center of Excellence (CoE) around these services.