Standardizing Healthcare Datasets in China: Challenges and Strategies

Standardized datasets are foundational to healthcare informatization by enhancing data quality and unleashing the value of data elements. Using bibliometrics and content analysis, this study examines China's healthcare dataset standards from 2011 to 2025. It analyzes their evolution across types, applications, institutions, and themes, highlighting key achievements including substantial growth in quantity, optimized typology, expansion into innovative application scenarios such as health decision support, and broadened institutional involvement. The study also identifies critical challenges, including imbalanced development, insufficient quality control, and a lack of essential metadata-such as authoritative data element mappings and privacy annotations-which hampers the delivery of intelligent services. To address these challenges, the study proposes a multi-faceted strategy focused on optimizing the standard system's architecture, enhancing quality and implementation, and advancing both data governance-through authoritative tracing and privacy protection-and intelligent service provision. These strategies aim to promote the application of dataset standards, thereby fostering and securing the development of new productive forces in healthcare.