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Shift-Left EHR Data Quality as a Patient-Safety Strategy in European Acute Hospitals

Introduction A “shift-left” data quality strategy in an Electronic Health Record (EHR) means that data are validated, standardized, governed, and made clinically usable at the point where they are created, rather than corrected later in a data warehouse, registry, audit process, medicial coding or AI pipeline. In a European acute hospital, this is not merely an informatics improvement. It is a patient-safety intervention, a clinical governance obligation, and a regulatory compliance strategy under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Health Data Space Regulation (EHDS), and the Artificial Intelligence Act when EHR data feed AI-enabled clinical decision support systems. The central argument of my essay is that a shift-left EHR data quality strategy should be implemented as a risk-based clinical safety programme, not as a purely technical data-cleaning project. It should prioritize data elements that directly affect diagnosis, medication safety, care escalation, ha...
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Cheat sheet medische dossiervoering, MZG-codering en BFM-impact - voor artsen in Belgische acute ziekenhuizen

 Inleiding Deze cheat sheet is geschreven als intern ziekenhuisdocument, voornamelijk voor Belgische artsen in een niet-psychiatrisch ziekenhuis. De belangrijkste bron voor deze cheat sheet is MZG , een verplicht registratiesysteem voor Belgische niet-psychiatrische ziekenhuizen. MZG ondersteunt onder meer organisatie en financiering van de gezondheidszorg (BFM); de registratie gebeurt via Portahealth (PH).  Het Belgisch ziekenhuisdossier moet minimaal diagnoses, onderzoeken, adviezen, behandeling, evolutie, operatie-/anesthesieprotocol en ontslagverslag bevatten; het ontslagverslag moet de continuïteit waarborgen en het dossier moet de diagnostische en therapeutische aanpak getrouw weergeven.  Voor MZG worden administratieve en medische gegevens continu geregistreerd binnen semestriële registratieperiodes; overdracht aan de FOD Volksgezondheid gebeurt uiterlijk vijf maanden na het einde van de registratieperiode, na uitgebreide interne en externe controles en valid...
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Implementing Secondary Use of Healthcare Data Through High-Quality Primary Use: A Primary-Care-Pathway First Strategy

Abstract Secondary use of healthcare data for research, population health management, quality improvement, policy, and artificial intelligence cannot be implemented successfully as a purely technical data-platform initiative. Its reliability depends on the quality, provenance, semantic consistency, and clinical relevance of data generated during care. The central argument of this essay is that healthcare organizations should implement secondary data use through a “primary-use first” strategy: data must first help clinicians, nurses, patients, and multidisciplinary teams make better decisions in real care pathways. Only then can the same data become a trustworthy foundation for research, management, innovation, and AI. This requires clinical governance, workflow redesign, semantic standardization, continuous data-quality measurement, trustworthy access governance, and feedback loops that return value to care delivery. The learning health system provides the most appropriate conceptual ...
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