Development of Indicators to Validate EMR Data: The DIVE Study

Increasingly, primary health care providers in Canada are using electronic medical records in their practices. Interest is also rising in the use of the data from electronic medical records for research and monitoring disease in our population. However, little is known about the quality of the data within electronic medical records. Currently, there is no universally accepted way to measure the level of data quality with electronic medical records. Higher quality EMR data would potentially allow providers to more effectively manage their practice populations. Indeed, the functioning of specific components of the EMR such as decision support, requires the system to contain accurate information. Primary health care researchers need data of high quality to avoid bias and erroneous conclusions in their studies. Decision-makers may require standardized data which can be aggregated across primary health care (based on many EMRs) for policy-making and planning. The lack of accepted indicators to assess EMR data quality poses a challenge to those seeking to use EMR data both for managing practice populations, and broader purposes such as research. This study seeks to address this gap by defining indicators of data quality and testing these indicators within electronic medical record datasets.