A Meta-Data Manifesto: The Need for Global Health Meta-Data

Administrative health data recorded for individual health episodes (such as births, deaths, physician visits, and hospital stays) are being widely used to study policy-relevant scientific questions about population health, health services, and quality of care. An increasing number of international health comparisons are undertaken with these data. An essential pre-requisite to such international comparative work is a detailed characterization of existing international health data resources, so that they can be more readily used for comparisons across counties. A major challenge to such international comparative work is the variability across countries in the extent, content, and validity of existing administrative data holdings. Recognizing this, we have undertaken an international proof of concept pilot compiling detailed data about data - i.e., a "meta-data catalogue" - for existing international administrative health data holdings. We describe the methodological process for collecting these meta-data, along with some general descriptive results for selected countries included in the pilot.