Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, , Beer-Sheva, Israel.
J Epidemiol Community Health. 2014 Mar;68(3):283-7. doi: 10.1136/jech-2013-202744. Epub 2013 Nov 18.
Administrative medical databases are massive repositories of data collected in healthcare for various purposes. Such databases are maintained in hospitals, health maintenance organisations and health insurance organisations. Administrative databases may contain medical claims for reimbursement, records of health services, medical procedures, prescriptions, and diagnoses information. It is clear that such systems may provide a valuable variety of clinical and demographic information as well as an on-going process of data collection. In general, information gathering in these databases does not initially presume and is not planned for research purposes. Nonetheless, administrative databases may be used as a robust research tool. In this article, we address the subject of public health research that employs administrative data. We discuss the biases and the limitations of such research, as well as other important epidemiological and biostatistical key points specific to administrative database studies.
行政医疗数据库是为各种目的在医疗保健中收集的数据的大型存储库。这些数据库由医院、健康维护组织和健康保险公司维护。行政数据库可能包含医疗报销索赔、健康服务记录、医疗程序、处方和诊断信息。显然，这些系统可以提供有价值的各种临床和人口统计信息以及持续的数据收集过程。一般来说，这些数据库中的信息收集最初并不是为了研究目的而假设和计划的。尽管如此，行政数据库仍可作为一种强大的研究工具。在本文中，我们将讨论使用行政数据进行公共卫生研究的主题。我们讨论了这种研究的偏倚和局限性，以及行政数据库研究特有的其他重要流行病学和生物统计学要点。
