National Center for Global Health and Medicine Reports Findings in Information Technology [Literature Review of Studies Using the National Database of the Health Insurance Claims of Japan (NDB): Limitations and Strategies in Using the NDB for …]: Information Technology

2024 FEB 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Information Technology is the subject of a report. According to news reporting from Tokyo, Japan, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “The use of the National Database of Health Insurance Claims and Specific Health Checkups of Japan (NDB) for research has increased over time. Researchers need to understand the characteristics of the data to generate quality-assured evidence from the NDB.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from National Center for Global Health and Medicine, “In this review, we mapped and characterized the limitations and related strategies using the NDB for research based on the descriptions of published NDB studies. To find studies that used Japanese healthcare claims data, we searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Ichushi-Web up to June 2023. Additionally, we hand-searched the NDB data publication list from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2017-2023). We abstracted data based on the NDB data type, research themes, age of the study sample or population, targeted disease, and the limitations and strategies in the NDB studies. Ultimately, 267 studies were included. Overall, the most common research theme was describing and estimating the prescriptions and treatment patterns (125 studies, 46.8%). There was a variation in the frequency of themes according to the type of NDB data. We identified the following categories of limitations: (1) lack of information on confounders/covariates, outcomes, and other clinical content, (2) limitations regarding patients not included in the NDB, (3) misclassification of data, (4) lack of unique identifiers and register of beneficiaries, and (5) others. Although the included studies noted several limitations of using the NDB for research, they also provided some strategies to address them.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Organizing the limitations of NDB in research and the related strategies across research fields can help support high-quality NDB studies.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Literature Review of Studies Using the National Database of the Health Insurance Claims of Japan (NDB): Limitations and Strategies in Using the NDB for Research. JMA Journal, 2023;7(1):10-20.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Arisa Iba, Institute for Global Health Policy Research, Bureau of International Health Cooperation, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo, Japan. Additional authors for this research include Maiko Suto, Takehiro Sugiyama, Tomoko Kodama, Misa Takegami, Reina Taguchi, Mariko Niino, Ryuji Koizumi, Kimikazu Kashiwagi, Kenjiro Imai, Noriko Ihana-Sugiyama, Yuichi Ichinose, Kenji Takehara and Hiroyasu Iso.

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