Study on Establishment of Disease Database and Query System Through Internet Using Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Sets / 대한의료정보학회지

ABSTRACT

It is necessary to have accurate statistical data of disease for planning and evaluating public health policy as well as assessing population health index. The national health insurance data is the only data to assess incidence of diseases nation-wide. However, inaccuracy of the data pose serious limitations of use of the data. The Medical Record Departments of individual health facilities have used discharge summary information for hospital management and clinical research, but a nation-wide integrated database of diseases has not been setup and utilized. We applied previously developed Korean Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Sets to collect discha rge summary data from health care facilities and establish integrated database. We also made the question and answer column about disease of the database in the internet. We collected patient discharge data from a tertiary-care hospital for one year using the electronic discharge summary data collection system, except for health care costs. The internet querying system provided optional selection of columns or rows, individual and/or disease groups and surgical procedures. To make query easy, the system provided various functions like querying codes of diseases and/or surgical operations, reviewing questions, downloading results via excel files, help functions of query. The establishment of disease database and the interactive system through internet is in its inception, further studies may be necessary to make it a user friendly and accurate system. There is a need of an accurate assessment of current population-based health status and future trends in Korea. It is hoped that this study may trigger to establish national accurate database for enhancing studies of health policy making, clinical research and vital health statistics by expanding data collections to the se condary- care and primary- care institutions.