Description:

EST is the national coordinating centre for STI’s surveillance on behalf of the Ministry of Health, has the role of collating, checking, analysing and reporting data from participating clinics and laboratories on the occurrence of the following STI’s: Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea, Syphilis, Genital Warts, Genital Herpes, Non-specific Urethritis (NSU), Chancroid, Granuloma Inguinale, and Lymphogranuloma Venereum. Data comes from sexual health clinics and labs on a voluntary basis monthly. HIV is held by Otago.

Additional information:

Have_(encrypted)_NHI Yes
Personally identifiable (e.g. linked to NHI numbers) and longitudinal or aggregated (e.g. for planning, clinical research etc.)? Yes - via NHI
Volume of data (e.g. how many records) Since when? 27,000 (most chlamydia)
Purpose and governance including ethics committee/patient consent mechanisms. Q: How do you get around ethics/privacy issues with your data sources? Esp. DHBs? collect on behalf of MoH - just custodians. No link to other stakeholders or consumer groups. Data access: happens through DAP - ESR manages external data requests but MoH approves. Internal access list is applied
Scope National
Does the data contain diagnoses and clinical outcomes? Does the data contain procedures, device information and medication for therapy? Does this data set have cost / price data? not much - a lot simpler than EpiSurv
Presence of Data dictionary? Column headings in Excel or any kind of data model if residing in a relational database (e.g. Access, SQL Server, Oracle etc.) Case definition available; Data fields: age, sex, DoB, Dx (+ or -),
Linked (or linkable) to other datasets within your organisation or across the Sector NHI matching to get ethnicity, DoB, address,deprivation index, geocode etc. so linkage involved. Every quarter new NHIs sent to MoH. Once linked, it is anonymised by encrypting NHI (eNHI). MD file hash used
How often does this data set get updated? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Yearly? monthly
Indication of data quality (e.g. missing values, duplications, inconsistencies etc.). Q: Audits? How do you ensure the data is valid and correct? reasonably good.
Brief info about the systems and processes used to collect/manage data. Q: Where the data is collected, in what form, and accessibility? No data collection tool - Excel sheets, as faxes! ESR cleans, organises, puts into DB, analyses and prepares annual reports
Data format, e.g., data structure, data types, and storage form (relational database, Excel, csv, etc.). Data goes into RDBMS
How well the data is structured, e.g. free text VS coded text VS pick-list (drop-down list) all structured