Clinical information quality of digital health technologies: protocol for an international eDelphi study

Kayode Philip Fadahunsi; Petra A Wark; Nikolaos Mastellos; Joseph Gallagher; Azeem Majeed; Josip Car

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-057430

Clinical information quality of digital health technologies: protocol for an international eDelphi study

BMJ Open. 2022 Apr 22;12(4):e057430. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-057430.

Authors

Kayode Philip Fadahunsi¹, Petra A Wark^{1

2}, Nikolaos Mastellos¹, Joseph Gallagher³, Azeem Majeed¹, Josip Car^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Primary Care and Public Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
² Centre for Intelligent Healthcare, Institute for Health and Wellbeing, Coventry University, Coventry, UK.
³ gHealth Research Group, School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
⁴ Primary Care and Public Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK josip.car@imperial.ac.uk.
⁵ Centre for Population Health Sciences, LKC Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Abstract

Introduction: Digital health technologies (DHTs) such as electronic health records, clinical decision support systems and electronic prescribing systems are widely used in healthcare. While adoption of DHTs can improve healthcare delivery, information quality (IQ) problems associated with DHTs can compromise quality and safety of care. The clinical information quality (CLIQ) framework for digital health is a novel approach to assessing the quality of clinical information from DHTs. This study aims to appraise the CLIQ framework by exploring clinicians' perspectives on the relevance, definition and assessment of IQ dimensions as defined in the framework. This study will adapt the CLIQ framework to the needs of clinical information users-the clinicians. The contextualised CLIQ framework will offer a pragmatic approach to assessing clinical information from DHTs and may help to forestall IQ problems that can compromise quality and safety of care.

Methods and analysis: The electronic Delphi (eDelphi) approach will be used to engage a heterogeneous group of clinicians with patient-facing and/or information governance roles recruited through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. A semi-structured online questionnaire will be used to explore clinicians' perspectives on relevance, definition and assessment of IQ dimensions in the CLIQ framework. Survey responses on the relevance of dimensions will be summarised using descriptive statistics to inform decisions on retention of dimensions and termination of the study, based on pre-specified rules. Analysis of the free-text responses will be used to revise definition and assessment of dimensions.

Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval has been obtained from the Imperial College Research Governance and Integrity Team (Imperial College Research Ethics Committee (ICREC) Reference number: 20IC6396). The results of the study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at scientific conferences.

Keywords: Health informatics; Information management; Quality in health care.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Delivery of Health Care*
Delphi Technique
Electronics*
Humans

Grants and funding

DH_/Department of Health/United Kingdom