In late September 2022, members of HCA’s Digital Health Unit Lee Ridoutt and the Unit team leader Paul O’Connor, participated in the 35^th Patient Classification Systems International (PCSI) conference held in Reykjavik. The PCSI partnered with the Icelandic Ministry of Health and the Nordic Casemix Centre to deliver an interactive conference with theme “Casemix as a foundation for sustainable health management”. The theme, influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, intended to reflect a deep thinking about many of the problems which are facing health systems, such as pandemics, an aging population, workforce shortages and a rising cost of living, and what we can do to support them in the future.

Drawing on this theme, HCA’s specific contribution to the conference attempted to conceive of a way to create and sustain structures to collect, safely store, and allow appropriate access to high quality data. This is an important issue in all countries but especially low and middle-income countries. HCA’s contribution took two forms:

1. A half-day workshop on the first day of the Conference designed and facilitated (with the help of other Unit members, especially Beth Reid). The workshop titled ‘Health care data advocacy: Meeting the skills needs of information quality advocates for the health sector’, introduced the concept of a data quality advocate and explored the competencies required for this role. The PowerPoint presentation that supported the workshop can be found HERE. An article that details the results of the workshop (along with pre- and post-workshop data collection) is in development and will be available later in the year. Register your interest if you want to be notified when the article is published.
2. A presentation on the last day of the Conference by Paul titled ‘Moving data collection from a “vicious” cycle to a “virtuous” cycle – a cycle of continuous improvement’. The presentation, based on experiences of the Digital Health Unit team over many years and countries, explored the importance of data use in a ‘virtuous’ cycle of obtaining quality data. A copy of the paper presented to the Conference can be obtained HERE.

Overall, the Conference was considered a great success with a number of quality of presentations and keynote speeches, a wide diversity of participants and lively interactive group discussions. HCA’s contribution, through Paul and Lee at the Conference, and other team members in the preparation, was well regarded.