Performance evaluation of a multinational data platform for critical care in Asia

ObjectiveWe aimed to evaluate the quality of a multinational intensive care unit (ICU) network of registries of critically ill patients established in seven Asian low and middle income countries (LMICs). MethodsThe Critical Care Asia federated registry platform enables ICUs to collect clinical, outcome and process data for aggregate and unit-level analysis. The evaluation used the standardised criteria of the Directory of Clinical Databases (DoCDat) and a framework for data quality assurance in medical registries. Six reviewers assessed structure, coverage, reliability and validity of the ICU registry data. Case mix and process measures on patient episodes from June to December 2020 were analysed. ResultsData on 20,507 consecutive patient episodes from 97 ICUs in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan and Vietnam were included. The quality level achieved according to the ten prespecified DoCDat criteria was high (average score 3.4 out of 4) as was the structural and organizational performance -- comparable to ICU registries in high-income countries. Identified strengths were types of variables included, reliability of coding, data completeness and validation. Potential improvements include extension of national coverage. ConclusionThe Critical Care Asia platform evaluates well using standardised frameworks for data quality and equally to registries in resource-rich settings. FundingThis work was undertaken as part of the existing Wellcome Innovations Flagship award, Collaboration for Research, Improvement and Training in Critical CARE in ASIA (ref. 215522/Z/19/Z). The funder had no role in the decision to publish or in the preparation of this manuscript.