Data on Health and Medicine Detailed by Researchers at University of Edinburgh (Using Health Insurance Databases For Epidemiological Research: A Scoping Review): Health and Medicine

2023 JUN 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in agriculture. According to news originating from the University of Edinburgh by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “This scoping review aimed to appraise the existing literature on using the claims databases for epidemiological studies and to draw inferences for using data from Pakistan’s health insurance databases. We conducted a scoping review of literature focusing on health insurance databases, querying MEDLINE, EMBASE and Google Scholar.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from University of Edinburgh: “We used the frameworks proposed by the Joanna Briggs Institute and Arksy and O’Malley for mapping our results. There was a considerable chronological increase in studies published using data from health insurance databases. Most of the studies in our search were from economically developed countries. Most of the studies (n=84) focussed on chronic non-communicable diseases, while a limited number (n=09) focussed on communicable (infectious) diseases. Our findings suggest that insurance databases could be utilised to study rare diseases, prospects of prolonged follow-up, and minimal research costs. This is especially important for countries like Pakistan, having limited resources to conduct regular, population-level epidemiological studies. Several methodological approaches (for instance, disease, pharmacy or intervention classification codes) were presented in these studies to extract epidemiological data from the insurance database.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Health insurance databases are utilised as sources for epidemiological studies, predominantly for chronic illnesses, in economically developed countries. Methodological approaches described in these papers could be used to extract data for epidemiological research from health insurance databases in Pakistan. This could be especially useful for following the patterns of infectious disease in the country.”

For more information on this research see: Using Health Insurance Databases For Epidemiological Research: A Scoping Review. Khyber Medical University Journal, 2022,14(4):281-91. (Khyber Medical University Journal - http://www.kmuj.kmu.edu.pk/index). The publisher for Khyber Medical University Journal is Khyber Medical University.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.35845/kmuj.2022.21480.

Our news editors report that more information may be obtained by contacting Sheraz Ahmad Khan, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Additional authors for this research include Raheel Shahab Khan, Ayisha Jamil.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)