Data Quality in the ProVal-MS Study: Challenges and Lessons Learned

Data quality assessment in medical research is crucial if the findings are to be data-driven. This is especially true if data is collected in clinical routine and originates from multicenter studies with complex, multi-step data processing pipelines that aim to harmonize and integrate data across all participating centers for data evaluation and analysis. The multicentric, non-interventional, and prospective ProVal-MS cohort study was established to externally validate a treatment decision score for adults with relapsing multiple sclerosis. Hence, a data quality management strategy was necessary to ensure the reliability of the findings. The evaluation and analysis of the implemented data quality assessment strategy is the primary focus of this work. It involves identifying data quality issues, assessing whether they can be resolved, and exploring and implementing potential improvements. A questionnaire was used to identify, evaluate, and analyze the data quality issues encountered, along with the time required to resolve them. We found that with an earlier DQ assessment, up to 700 (70%) working hours could be saved. As a consequence, we plan to assess data quality earlier in the processing pipeline to reduce the time required to detect and resolve data quality issues.