Harnessing Routinely Collected Health Data for Global Monitoring of Stroke: Roadmap and Vision for INSPIRE-STROKE

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Epidemiology
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Growing global burden of stroke necessitates sustainable, low-cost surveillance systems.
• Routinely collected health data offers potential for global stroke surveillance but faces challenges like non-standardized definitions and missing data.
• A new global collaboration aims to leverage and harmonize population-level health data for effective stroke surveillance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the vision and methods of a new global collaboration for stroke surveillance.
• To develop new methods for harmonizing and combining global health databases for reliable multi-country stroke surveillance.
• To establish consensus-based standards for analyzing routinely collected health data on post-stroke outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Establishment of the International Network for Standardised Population Insights and Real-world Evidence for STROKE (INSPIRE-STROKE) with 39 collaborators from 16 countries.
• Summarizing existing methods for calculating post-stroke outcomes from routinely collected health data.
• Developing consensus-based standards for data analysis and conducting proof-of-concept studies to align variables and create standardized statistical code for measuring post-stroke outcomes.

Main Results:

• INSPIRE-STROKE will enable more reliable investigations into country-level stroke incidence and outcome trends.
• The compiled data will facilitate exploration of rare stroke outcomes, including in under-represented populations.
• Standardized data will strengthen health policy and resource planning for stroke care.

Conclusions:

• INSPIRE-STROKE will enhance global stroke surveillance by leveraging harmonized, routinely collected health data.
• The initiative will provide high-quality evidence to improve stroke care access and maximize patient outcomes.
• This collaboration will support more informed health policy and resource allocation for stroke management worldwide.