Development of an electronic burns register : Digitisation of routinely collected hospital data for global burns surveillance

Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved..

INTRODUCTION: Burn registers provide important data that can track injury trends and evaluate services. Burn registers are concentrated in high-income countries, but most burn injuries occur in low- and middle-income countries where surveillance data are limited. Injury surveillance guidance recommends utilisation of existing routinely collected data where data quality is adequate, but there is a lack of guidance on how to achieve this. Our aim was to develop a rigorous and reproducible method to establish an electronic burn register from existing routinely collected data that can be implemented in low resource settings.

METHODS: Data quality of handwritten routinely collected records (register books) from a tertiary government hospital burn unit in Mysore, India was assessed prior to digitisation. Process mapping was conducted for burn patient presentations. Register and casualty records were compared to assess the case ascertainment rate. Register books from February 2016 to February 2022 were scanned and anonymised. Scans were quality checked and stored securely. An online data entry form was developed. All data underwent double verification.

RESULTS: Process mapping suggested data were reliable, and case ascertainment was 95%. 1930 presentations were recorded in the registers, representing 0.84% of hospital all-cause admissions. 388 pages were scanned with 4.4% requiring rescanning due to quality problems. Two-step verification estimated there to be errors remaining in 0.06% of fields following data entry.

CONCLUSION: We have described, using the example of a newly established electronic register in India, methods to assess the suitability and reliability of existing routinely collected data for surveillance purposes, to digitise handwritten data, and to quantify error during the digitisation process. The methods are likely to be of particular interest to burn units in countries with no active national burns register. We strongly recommend mobilisation of resources for digitisation of existing high quality routinely collected data as an important step towards developing burn surveillance systems in low resource settings.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:50

Enthalten in:

Burns : journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries - 50(2024), 2 vom: 23. Feb., Seite 395-404

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Bebbington, Emily [VerfasserIn]
Kakola, Mohan [VerfasserIn]
Nagaraj, Santhosh [VerfasserIn]
Guruswamy, Sathish [VerfasserIn]
McPhillips, Rebecca [VerfasserIn]
Majgi, Sumanth Mallikarjuna [VerfasserIn]
Rajendra, Rajagopal [VerfasserIn]
Krishna, Murali [VerfasserIn]
Poole, Rob [VerfasserIn]
Robinson, Catherine [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Burn
India
Journal Article
Register
Routinely collected data
Surveillance

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 26.02.2024

Date Revised 26.02.2024

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.burns.2023.08.007

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM36662640X