TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2023//
TI  - Development of an electronic burns register: digitisation of routinely collected hospital data for global burns surveillance
JO  - Burns: journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries
A1  - Bebbington, Emily
A1  - Kakola, Mohan
A1  - Nagaraj, Santhosh
A1  - Guruswamy, Sathish
A1  - McPhillips, Rebecca
A1  - Majgi, Sumanth Mallikarjuna
A1  - Rajendra, Rajagopal
A1  - Krishna, Murali
A1  - Poole, Rob
A1  - Robinson, Catherine
SP  - ePub
EP  - ePub
VL  - ePub
IS  - ePub
N2  - INTRODUCTION: Burn registers provide important data that can track injury trends and evaluate services. Burn registers are concentrated in high-income countries, but most burn injuries occur in low- and middle-income countries where surveillance data are limited. Injury surveillance guidance recommends utilisation of existing routinely collected data where data quality is adequate, but there is a lack of guidance on how to achieve this. Our aim was to develop a rigorous and reproducible method to establish an electronic burn register from existing routinely collected data that can be implemented in low resource settings. <br><br>METHODS: Data quality of handwritten routinely collected records (register books) from a tertiary government hospital burn unit in Mysore, India was assessed prior to digitisation. Process mapping was conducted for burn patient presentations. Register and casualty records were compared to assess the case ascertainment rate. Register books from February 2016 to February 2022 were scanned and anonymised. Scans were quality checked and stored securely. An online data entry form was developed. All data underwent double verification. <br><br>RESULTS: Process mapping suggested data were reliable, and case ascertainment was 95%. 1930 presentations were recorded in the registers, representing 0.84% of hospital all-cause admissions. 388 pages were scanned with 4.4% requiring rescanning due to quality problems. Two-step verification estimated there to be errors remaining in 0.06% of fields following data entry. <br><br>CONCLUSION: We have described, using the example of a newly established electronic register in India, methods to assess the suitability and reliability of existing routinely collected data for surveillance purposes, to digitise handwritten data, and to quantify error during the digitisation process. The methods are likely to be of particular interest to burn units in countries with no active national burns register. We strongly recommend mobilisation of resources for digitisation of existing high quality routinely collected data as an important step towards developing burn surveillance systems in low resource settings.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0305-4179
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2023.08.007
ID  - ref1
ER  -