Real World Data Study Breaks Down Data Quality Assessment for COVID-19 Therapeutics

February 20, 2023

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There is a significant pool of electronic health records (EHR) that could be used to generate real-world evidence (RWE) exploring COVID-19 therapeutics, but data quality and interoperability varies between sources. A newly published study in BMC Medical Research Methodology examines data assessments for COVID-19 therapeutic real-world data (RWD) sources.

According to the authors, “Electronic health records (EHR) are generated at the time of healthcare delivery as a component of clinical care. Structured data in EHR typically include detailed information on clinical encounters including any procedures, diagnoses, ordered and administered medications, demographic data, vitals, and lab orders and results. Because the United States does not have a universal healthcare system, EHR data are maintained by individual health systems, each with different standards and protocols for data collection and storage, leading to a high degree of variability in the availability and quality of data across systems. Even when the same EHR platform is used by two health systems, differences in implementation are common. This lack of centralized or standardized reporting creates difficulties in using EHR at a large scale to conduct nationally representative research.”

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