Health lags far behind other sectors in harnessing the potential of data and digital technology, missing the opportunity to save a significant number of lives and billions of dollars. A digital transformation is urgently needed and long overdue at a time of increasing pressure on health systems and budgets. This means ensuring access to the right information by the right people at the right time. The OECD is working with countries as they develop policies to strengthen their health data infrastructure, with the objective of creating safer, better and more efficient health systems and healthier populations.

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GOOD AND TIMELY HEALTH DATA CAN SAVE LIVES

The COVID‑19 pandemic has brought into focus the importance of reliable, up-to-date information, needed by policy makers for:

• Early warning of risks to public health
• Support early detection and control of a disease outbreak
• Monitor the changes in the overall use and outcomes of healthcare
• Acquire and allocate human and physical resources
• Forecast the progression and impact of the outbreak
• Evaluate and learn from the outbreak
• Understand its longer-term impacts on health and the healthcare system

Countries need the right data infrastructure in place for producing health statistics and measuring healthcare quality and outcomes, leveraging data and extracting information from registries, administrative data, electronic health records, and referencing them with other sources often beyond the health system.

HEALTH INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE REVIEW SERIES

The OECD helps countries review and improve their information infrastructure for better health data. This includes:

• Assessment of the health information system and its governance
• Integrating health data infrastructure across care settings and social services
• Incorporation of new and emerging technologies and modes of analysis
• Building the workforce needed to operate a 21st century health infrastructure system
  
  

• Towards an Integrated Health Information System in Korea (May 2022)
• Towards an Integrated Health Information System in the Netherlands (February 2022)
  
  

COUNCIL RECOMMENDATION AND OTHER BACKGROUND MATERIAL

OECD Health Ministers welcomed the Recommendation of the OECD Council on Health Data Governance at their meeting in Paris on 17 January 2017. The Recommendation lays out the framework conditions to encourage greater availability and processing of health data within countries and across borders for health-related public policy objectives, while ensuring that risks to privacy and security are minimised and appropriately managed. 

The Recommendation is the product of a multi-stakeholder consultation process. The Recommendation calls upon countries to develop and implement national health data governance frameworks according to twelve high level principles, setting the conditions for greater harmonisation so that more countries are able to benefit from statistical and research uses of data in which there is a public interest, and from international comparisons.

• Health Data Governance for the Digital Age: Implementing the OECD Recommendation on Health Data Governance (May 2022)
• Recommendation of the Council on Health Data Governance (2017)
• Presentation of the new Health Data Governance Recommendation (2017)

 

FURTHER READING

• Progress on implementing and using electronic health record systems - Developments in OECD countries as of 2021, OECD Health Working Paper No. 160 (2023)
• Laying the Foundations for Artificial Intelligence in Health, OECD Health Working Paper No. 128 (2021)
• Survey Results: National Health Data Infrastructure and Governance, OECD Health Working Paper No. 127 (2021)
• Opportunities and Challenges of Blockchain Technologies in Health Care (2020)
• Bringing health care to the patient: An overview of the use of telemedicine in OECD countries, OECD Health Working Paper No. 116 (2020)
• Health in the 21st Century: Putting Data to Work for Stronger Health Systems (2019)
• Governing data for better health and health care. Article by Jillian Oderkirk, OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, and Elettra Ronchi, OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation. OECD Observer, January 2017

Learn more about our work on:

• Health Data Governance: Privacy, Monitoring and Research
• Strengthening Health Information Infrastructure for Healthcare Quality Governance
• Digital Health
• Healthcare Quality and Outcomes
• Health Statistics
• Health Policies