The Minimum Data Set for Rare Diseases: Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: The minimum data set (MDS) is a collection of data elements to be grouped using a standard approach to allow the use of data for clinical and research purposes. Health data are typically voluminous, complex, and sometimes too ambiguous to generate indicators that can provide knowledge and information on health. This complexity extends further to the rare disease (RD) domain. MDSs are essential for health surveillance as they help provide services and generate recommended population indicators. There is a bottleneck in international literature that reveals a global problem with data collection, recording, and structuring in RD.

Objective: This study aimed to identify and analyze the MDSs used for RD in health care networks worldwide and compare them with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

Methods: The population, concept, and context methodology proposed by the Joanna Briggs Institute was used to define the research question of this systematic review. A total of 4 databases were reviewed, and all the processes were reported using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) methodology. The data elements were analyzed, extracted, and organized into 10 categories according to WHO digital health guidelines. The quality assessment used the STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) checklist.

Results: We included 20 studies in our review, 70% (n=14) of which focused on a specific health domain and 30% (n=6) of which referred to RD in general. WHO recommends that health systems and networks use standard terminology to exchange data, information, knowledge, and intelligence in health. However, there was a lack of terminological standardization of the concepts in MDSs. Moreover, the selected studies did not follow the same standard structure for classifying the data from their MDSs. All studies presented MDSs with limitations or restrictions because they covered only a specific RD, or their scope of application was restricted to a specific context or geographic region. Data science methods and clinical experience were used to design, structure, and recommend a fundamental global MDS for RD patient records in health care networks.

Conclusions: Our study highlights the difficulties in standardizing and categorizing findings from MDSs for RD because of the varying structures used in different studies. The fundamental RD MDS designed in this study comprehensively covers the data needs in the clinical and management sectors. These results can help public policy makers support other aspects of their policies. We highlight the potential of our results to help strategic decisions related to RD.

Trial registration: PROSPERO CRD42021221593; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=221593.

International registered report identifier (irrid): RR2-10.1016/j.procs.2021.12.034.

Keywords: health care system; health network; minimum data set; public health; rare disease.