Taking stock of the evidence – from data use to health system improvement

Many countries are benefiting from the linkage and analysis of personal health data to provide the evidence needed for health policy decisions to improve the quality and efficiency of health care. Examples range from reporting on the cost-effectiveness and clinical appropriateness of care in Finland, Korea and Singapore to assessments of the quality and efficiency of clinical guidelines in Sweden to evaluating the safety of patient screening in Germany to evaluating the quality of surgical outcomes in Israel and the United Kingdom to examining care transitions in Australia and Canada.This chapter summarises 29 within-country projects and 10 multi-country projects deemed by country respondents to be policy relevant and to exemplify good practices in data protection. Among them, 14 study leaders were interviewed to provide additional information about their project and its relevance to health policy, as well as the steps taken to ensure privacy-respectful data use. For these 14 projects, a detailed case study summary is presented.