Data Set of electronic Personal Health Records for Iranian Students of Medical Sciences

Currently, the important role of personal health record (PHR) system is underlined due to increasing global concentration on the concept of patient-centered healthcare. Generating national standards and data sets as well as its advertisement by health providers will increase the wide-spread acceptance of PHR systems. The aim of this study was to determine optimal data set of electronic PHR system for Iranian students of medical sciences.

The study was conducted in three steps, i.e. qualitative comparison of data sets in USA, Australia, and UK; quantitative-descriptive assessment among 301 subjects, who was the students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences and their healthcare providers; and finally qualitative Delphi technique to take the outcomes of the comments of 60 specialists and experts in six classified field, i.e. management, medicine, dentistry, nursing, rehabilitation, and mental health, in 2014. Data collection questionnaire was arranged based on the common data sets of emerging countries and the available national student health records, approved by the Ministry of Health and Sciences. Its content validity has been approved by three experts and its reliability was confirmed with Cronbach's alpha value of 0.97 using internal consistency through SPSS20 software. The requirements assessment of stakeholders to achieve the required data collection and descriptive analysis was performed by calculating the distribution function of its frequency through Excel software. The questionnaire was prepared based on the results of the requirements assessment phase and Its content validity were approved by three experts in the field of clinical and management, Reliability analysis of research tool at this step of research was not possible, because in Delphi method respondents could completely change Its reply In each round. Descriptive analysis was performed based on the average through Excel software. The data elements those were higher than 4 in averages have been considered in proposed Data Set.

344 data elements were evaluated, 280 items among them was resulted from the requirements assessment step and 64 items among them were added in Delphi step. 271 data elements are approved, which five items were approved with perfect (100%) agreement. Finally, the data set and its subsets were determined.

Modifications and evolutions of data set elements over the study period underlined the important role the comments of both stakeholders and the experts for determining optimal data set among diverse range of possible fields. It can be concluded from the results of this study that more details, such as mental health, can be added to the PHR data set. Moreover, Student Health Certificate, which is used in most universities of Iran is incomplete and it has to be modified.