Improving services with informatics tools

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7526.1190

BMJ 2005;331:1190-1192 (19 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7526.1190

Clinical review

ABC of health informatics

Improving services with informatics tools

Frank Sullivan, NHS Tayside professor of research and development in general practice and primary care, Jeremy C Wyatt, professor of health informatics

University of Dundee.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

This article describes how many sources of data can be linked,interpreted, and analysed before being presented to decisionmakers to improve care. It also discusses the legal issues surroundingdata protection and freedom of information.

A huge volume of data flows across the desk of a director ofpublic health (see box opposite). One of the director's problemsis to know which signals to act upon and what "noise" to ignore.If the numbers being considered are small, as they probablywill be in the case described here, a critical incident analysismay be all that is needed. An individual prescriber, or group,may have an erroneous belief or inadequate training. Criticalincidents or other signals often indicate that more data (suchas data on prescribing steroids for paediatric asthma in primarycare and outpatients) are needed.

Sources of data

Health services are awash with data. Earlier articles in the. . . [Full text of this article]

Presentation of data

Feedback of performance data

Record linkage

Data protection

Feedback of information

Research governance

Summary

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