Data Infrastructure for a Poisoning Registry with Designing Data Elements and a Minimum Data Set

The prevalence of poisoning is on the rise in Iran. A poisoning registry is a key source of information about poisoning patterns used for decision-making and healthcare provision, and a minimum dataset (MDS) is a prerequisite for developing a registry.

This study aimed to design a MDS for a poisoning registry.

This applied study was conducted in 2021. A poisoning MDS was developed with a four-stage process: (1) conducting a systematic review of the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and EMBASE, (2) examining poisoning-related websites and online forms, (3) classification of data elements in separate meetings with three toxicology specialists, and (4) validating data elements using the two-stage Delphi technique. A researcher-made checklist was employed for this purpose. The content validity of the checklist was examined based on the opinions of five health information management and medical informatics experts with respect to the topic of the study. Its test-retest reliability was also confirmed with the recruitment of 25 experts (r = 0.8).

Overall, 368 data elements were identified from the articles and forms, of which 358 were confirmed via the two-stage Delphi technique and classified into administrative (n = 88) and clinical data elements (n = 270).

The creation of a poisoning registry requires identifying the information needs of healthcare centers, and an integrated and comprehensive framework should be developed to meet these needs. To this end, a MDS contains the essential data elements that form a framework for integrated and standard data collection.