Description
The Data Integrity Unit (DIU) was created as an innovative solution stood up during the global pandemic, during a time of immense pressures on the health system. As a province, we required the most accurate and complete data of immunization status to inform Public Health leaders who were tasked with making decisions impacting not only healthcare, but our political, economic, social, and technological systems. The data was reported on and scrutinized daily; it was imperative that our team was agile and well-organized to manage the frequent changes flooding in. We had to ensure our people and processes were adhering to the most current requirements. The DIU is still active, and continues to support work related to immunizations. The skillsets and competencies developed within the DIU are essential for the appropriate management of health information. We currently have hundreds of information systems containing health information in production in Nova Scotia, many are integrated, but many are not. Sharing information between these systems is essential to improving health care delivery – reducing risk of errors, miscommunication, duplication of efforts, improving patient experience, etc. If we’ve learned anything from the Covid experience it’s that the data upon which policy-makers make decisions (the data being shared between systems) must be as accurate and complete as possible. We can have clean data, it can be done, we just need to invest in the people and processes needed to do the work; this is the legacy of the Data Integrity Unit.