Research using emergency department-related data sets: current status and future directions

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Services Research
• Emergency Medicine

Background:

• The 2009 Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference highlighted the research potential of health-related data sets.
• A breakout session focused on public health in the emergency department (ED), emphasizing surveillance, screening, and intervention.
• This article details the proceedings from that session, focusing on ED-related data sets.

Purpose of the Study:

• To discuss the research value of emergency department (ED)-related data sets.
• To provide examples of using ED visit data for research.
• To identify barriers, limitations, and future directions for utilizing ED data.

Main Methods:

• Review of proceedings from a 2009 Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference breakout session.
• Discussion of available ED-related data set types.
• Analysis of barriers and limitations to research use of ED data.

Main Results:

• ED-related data sets are valuable for research, containing information from healthcare facilities and patient records.
• Key barriers to research include data linkage issues, access restrictions, incomplete collection, and jurisdictional parsing challenges.
• Five main needs were identified: electronic linkage of visits and outcomes, timely access, complete data collection, jurisdictional data access, and linkage with survey/claims data.

Conclusions:

• ED-related data sets hold significant potential for studying and improving individual and population health.
• Addressing identified needs is essential for unlocking the full research potential of these data sources.
• Future research should focus on overcoming current limitations to enhance data utility for public health initiatives.