Table 1
Overview of COVID-induced developments in health information systems, in countries contributing to country cases, in this study. NA = Data not available. Two-letter country codes: NL = the Netherlands, FI = Finland, BE = Belgium, FR = France, IE = Ireland, MD = Moldova and PL = Poland.
| NL | FI | BE | FR | IE | MD | PL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| As a result of COVID-19, country has introduced: | New technologies to improve health data availability, accessibility, sharing or data privacy and security protections | No | No | Yes | No | No | NA | Yes |
| Legal, regulatory or policy reforms to improve health data availability, accessibility, or sharing | No | No | Yes | No | No | NA | Yes | |
| Legal, regulatory or policy reforms to improve health data privacy or security protections | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | NA | Yes | |
| Financial incentives to improve health data availability, accessibility, sharing or data privacy and security protection | No | No | Yes | No | No | NA | No | |
| As a result of COVID-19, improvements to key national personal health datasets were made in terms of: | Timeliness | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | NA | Yes |
| Quality, coverage, and/or completeness | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | NA | Yes |
Figure 1
“To what extent does your hospital exchange COVID-related data with the following organisations and their data systems?” Perceived level/intensity of COVID-19 data exchange between respondents’ hospitals and other healthcare organisations (N = 62). Note: Diamond shapes represent recoded Likert-scale responses averages (from 1 = “Never”, through 3 = “Ad-hoc” to 5 = “Daily/real-time”). NA = Not applicable.
Table 2
“Please elaborate on lessons learnt with the exchange of COVID-19 related data”. Free-text replies grouped following thematic analysis (N = 30).
| SENTIMENT | LESSONS LEARNT |
|---|---|
| Positive | Pandemic as an opportunity for more data-driven interaction and collaboration. COVID-19 testing and vaccination as a test for existing data systems. Improvements in semantic and technical aspects of data exchange. Improved links to other care levels and organisations.Improved links within organisations themselves. |
| Neutral | Nothing changed. Still a lot to learn. |
| Negative | Siloed data systems and governance. One-directional sharing of data. Data production increased but in a disorganised way. |