Strengthening health information infrastructure: Next steps

The next five years appear promising, in terms of both the number of countries that plan to implement national electronic health record systems and the number of countries that consider it likely that the data from these systems will be used for some aspects of health care quality monitoring. They also appear promising for the further use of existing personal health databases and for the linkage of multiple sources of data to generate new evidence to improve population health, health care quality and the performance of the health system. Nonetheless, there are considerable and troubling differences across OECD countries in the extent to which existing health data may be used for public benefit. A role for the OECD in the coming years is to continue to support countries in reaching the goal of strengthening health information infrastructure so that privacy-respectful uses of data for health, health care quality and health system performance monitoring and research become widespread, regular activities. This requires monitoring national progress and assisting countries in overcoming obstacles to privacy-respectful data use. This chapter summarises the results of the 2011/12 OECD studies of the development and use of personal health data and the development and use of data from electronic health record systems, and makes recommendations for international actions.