Improving health-care delivery and innovation through secondary use of health data
WHO is supporting countries in the European Region in strengthening their health data and information systems to provide better personalized care for the nearly 1 billion people living in the 53 countries in the Region. This includes enhancing country capacities in secondary use of health data.
Health data refers to the information generated from delivering health care to populations, including through electronic health records, health insurance claims, disease registries, and clinical trials. Secondary use of health data is the processing of health data for purposes other than the initial purposes for which the data were collected. It offers a range of benefits and opportunities, such as optimizing health-care services, supporting planning, policy-making and resource allocation, as well as boosting innovation and research.
Health information system assessments in the Region have revealed obstacles resulting from data protection frameworks that are not appropriately geared to enable secondary use of health data. These include a lack of clarity on how to enable health data exchange while maintaining Europe’s strong data privacy protections, fragmentation of initiatives and approaches across the Region, as well as barriers to interoperability of health data.
Moreover, effective public health decisions are based not only on availability of data but also on their quality. The growing volume and complexity of health data requires the adoption of internationally recognized principles, standards, guidelines and methods for assessing and reporting on data quality.
The WHO Regional Office for Europe is supporting countries to overcome challenges in secondary use of health data and to improve data quality through regular trainings, workshops, and webinars, as well as by providing technical guidance.
This work contributes to Outcome 4.1 of WHO's Thirteenth General Programme of Work, which focuses on strengthening country capacities in data and innovation. Enhancing secondary use of health data also contributes to empowerment through digital health, which is a priority area of focus identified in the WHO European Programme of Work.
