Health Services/Policy
Approaches for complex data organization to facilitate implementation and effectiveness research on health promotion and disease prevention in health services settings Kamala Adhikari* Kamala Adhikari Gary Teare Muhammad Mughal Jawad Chishtie
Aim: The Integrating Prevention into Connect Care for Health (IPiC-Health) initiative is currently being implemented in health services settings in Alberta, Canada to modify patient’s smoking and alcohol use behavior. The initiative comprises implementation and effectiveness research using mixed methods involving quasi-experimental quantitative assessments of implementation uptake and effectiveness and qualitative evaluations of implementation factors. We aimed to develop practical approaches for the seamless organization of various types of quantitative data obtained from multiple, different sources within a complex clinical implementation context.
Methods: We export in-person and telephone-based surveys, administrative health data, and EHR data and informed consent forms to the Microsoft SQL (Structured Query Language) server. We use the SQL server for data storage, formatting, linkages, filtering, checking data quality, and creating data views in real-time or periodically. We identify eligible research participants, harmonize datasets, and create a central IPiC-Health research database using a unique ID in the SQL server. We export data to various software for analyses, visualization, and reporting. We engage research and information technology team and build team’s capacity to enable data organization processes.
Expected results: IPiC-Health is currently in the implementation and data collection and organization phase. The unified data organization keeps us organized to create a secure, rich, and high-quality IPiC-Health database ready for analysis. Briefly, the database allows the regular assessment of intervention uptake and effectiveness on behavior change, health services use, and cost savings associated with the initiative. It also permits those evaluations from an equity lens.
Conclusion: A unified data organization approach optimizes the efficient use of multiple data for monitoring health services initiatives and conducting unique various research.