Kitasato University Kitasato Institute Hospital Reports Findings in Crohn’s Disease (Development of algorithms for identifying patients with Crohn’s disease in the Japanese health insurance claims database): Digestive System Diseases and Conditions – Crohn’s Disease

2021 OCT 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Digestive System Diseases and Conditions - Crohn’s Disease is the subject of a report. According to news originating from Tokyo, Japan, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Real-world big data studies using health insurance claims databases require extraction algorithms to accurately identify target population and outcome. However, no algorithm for Crohn’s disease (CD) has yet been validated.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Kitasato University Kitasato Institute Hospital, “In this study we aim to develop an algorithm for identifying CD using the claims data of the insurance system. A single-center retrospective study to develop a CD extraction algorithm from insurance claims data was conducted. Patients visiting the Kitasato University Kitasato Institute Hospital between January 2015-February 2019 were enrolled, and data were extracted according to inclusion criteria combining the Tenth Revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) diagnosis codes with or without prescription or surgical codes. Hundred cases that met each inclusion criterion were randomly sampled and positive predictive values (PPVs) were calculated according to the diagnosis in the medical chart. Of all cases, 20% were reviewed in duplicate, and the inter-observer agreement (Kappa) was also calculated. From the 82,898 enrolled, 255 cases were extracted by diagnosis code alone, 197 by the combination of diagnosis and prescription codes, and 197 by the combination of diagnosis codes and prescription or surgical codes. The PPV for confirmed CD cases was 83% by diagnosis codes alone, but improved to 97% by combining with prescription codes. The inter-observer agreement was 0.9903.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Single ICD-code alone was insufficient to define CD; however, the algorithm that combined diagnosis codes with prescription codes indicated a sufficiently high PPV and will enable outcome-based research on CD using the Japanese claims database.”

For more information on this research see: Development of algorithms for identifying patients with Crohn’s disease in the Japanese health insurance claims database. PLOS ONE, 2021;16(10). PLOS ONE can be contacted at: Public Library Science, 1160 Battery Street, Ste 100, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA. (Public Library of Science - www.plos.org; PLOS ONE - www.plosone.org)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Taku Kobayashi, Center for Advanced IBD Research and Treatment, Kitasato University Kitasato Institute Hospital, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Additional authors for this research include Hiromu Morikubo, Tomohiro Fukuda, Takayoshi Nagahama, Tadakazu Hisamatsu and Toshifumi Hibi.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258537. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal PLOS ONE is: Public Library Science, 1160 Battery Street, Ste 100, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA.

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