DQ-SR: Towards the Standardization of Data Quality Reports

The data quality terminology framework provided by Kahn et al. differentiates between an internal Verification and an external Validation context. While solutions within the Verification context arise, multi-site networks such as the German MII or the European EHDS drive demand for solutions that address Validation. Our work explores if standardized data quality reports can be specified as HL7 FHIR resources to address this need. We define constraints that reports utilized in this context need to fulfil. We refer to such reports as data quality summary reports, DQ-SR in short. We then provide an example for DQ-SRs based on the German census data for age and gender distributions and a prototypical implementation of these DQ-SRs as FHIR R4 MeasureReports. While these example DQ-SRs are not backed by a medical use case, we hope that the comprehensive specification provided as an Implementation Guide can inspire further standardizations of data quality reports.