HISO develops Covid-19 data standard

eHealthNews.nz: Covid-19

Monday, 6 April 2020

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eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

The Health Information Standards Organisation has developed a data standard for Covid-19 community-based assessment in New Zealand.

The standard is for the patient assessment data set that Community Based Assessment Centres (CBACs) should collect and be able to report during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data set is the fastest ever developed by HISO and had 300 downloads within its first week online.

It is designed to ensure that all patient assessments for COVID-19 are consistently and completely recorded to enable properly informed health service response, surveillance and analytics.

HISO member Rebecca George says, “the full impact of information has been felt over the last few weeks as we have been glued to our news bulletins for the latest numbers and figures.

“We’ve been tracing and tracking the trend of this virus, gaining insights into the difficulties of uncovering information from patients.

“Due to those issues and the need to ensure standardisation of information it was logical to rapidly develop a new data standard for assessment of patients with Covid-19.”

Members of HISO took the Ministry of Health case definitions and WHO data guidance to develop a complete data set for community-based assessment and surveillance.

CBACs use a number of different software solutions around the country, and the new standard sets common requirements that each will implement.

George and HISO chair Alastair Kenworthy agreed that it was the fastest data standard to be developed by HISO.

“Thanks go to Kyle Ford and WellSouth PHO for their early example of a working solution,” George says.