The Research Group annually receives from the healthcare authorities in each autonomous community all the publicly-funded hospital episodes in the Spanish NHS hospitals. Based on these data (with all the clinical and administrative characteristics of each of the episodes), the geolocation of patients in their healthcare areas, basic health area and healthcare centre, using interoperable, efficient and innovative data management systems, the Research Group transform the data, and analyse and synthesise them, emphasising research results in the report, with interactive public access.
The need to integrate various information sources, complementing healthcare data with geographical, socioeconomic or other types of information, has made it necessary to developed standardised data models with which to consolidate all this information. These data models share requirements for both interoperability (dictionaries, nomenclatures, taxonomies and standards for each information source) and for efficient bulk data processing.
The value of the evidence generated on healthcare service performance (that is, the confidence in the findings and the relevance of the conclusions or recommendation derived from them) largely depends on the ability to insure that the data on which we base our analysis offer a faithful view of what really happens in the healthcare system. This risk is increased when, as in this case, it is necessary to integrate different information sources (not specifically healthcare related, whose data are recorded for other purposes) with sources of contextual (with socioeconomic, demographic and geographical information and so on), all while using data origins that can differ among the 17 autonomous communities included in the project.
As the first step in our work flow, the Research Group incorporates the systematic of the quality of the data in their origin and after their consolidation in the databases used in the analysis. The quality analysis consists of evaluating possible problems related to source coverage, depth of information available, and long-term consistency of the variables of interest.
Data processing and analysis strictly comply with the current legislation on use of personal data, in both their transfer from different sources and in their consolidation and maintenance in the Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud installations. The information safety policy
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Atlas VPM, coordinated by IACS, is recognized by the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Services and Equality as a privileged source (“Registro de Utilidad”) for the National Health System.
