GlobalSurg 3 – The Challenges of Data Validation

The Global Surgical Outcomes Collaboration

Thank you to all our GlobalSurg 3 validators!

Data validation on this scale is not an easy task – GlobalSurg are the first collaborative group attempting to validate such a large, international dataset in this way.

With your help we are setting a new international standard in doing so – but being the pioneers of any new process is always challenging!

It’s challenging for us too as we’ve had to find new and innovative solutions to managing this part of the study – we’ve summarised some of the main challenges below so you can share our experiences of what’s been happening behind the scenes to get this vital part of GlobalSurg 3 up and running!

Preparing for Validation

Before you can be issued with your validators REDCap account containing the data you’ll be validating, several things need to have happened:

The primary data team must have collected, entered and confirmed all their data is complete in their REDCap primary data collection accounts.
We then check that they have included a full 4-week data collection period, that all patients are fully complete and that all the operation dates fall within their stated data collection period.
We remove any patients that the team have flagged as being ineligible for inclusion.
Where multiple teams have taken part at a hospital, we randomise a single 4-week data collection period for validation. But this can only happen after steps 1-3 have been completed for all the teams at that hospital.

Sometimes we find problems with data, for example, if the primary data collection have entered patients with operations outside their data collection period or have not fully completed all their patient records.
We have been contacting teams to correct dates and complete records where necessary and this can lead to a delay in the data being released for validation.

Data Volume

By the close of primary data entry at the end of January 2019, 840 teams had entered data on more than 15,000 patients at 430 hospitals in 84 countries.

This exceeded all our expectations and is a fantastic achievement from our primary data collection teams, but is a lot of data to process!

We have now received registrations from 261 validators and have issued accounts for 200 – all the data checking and processing has been completed for those 200 hospitals.

This means we still have 61 registered validators awaiting their accounts.
If you’re still waiting for your account this is be due to the on-going data processing and checking.
We’re working hard to get the data checking finalised and your accounts issued as soon as possible.

You can check the progress of the primary data from your hospital via the validator registration dashboard (here) and live updates on validation accounts have been added to the data centre
data.globalsurg.org

We also need to recruit a further 162 validators if we are to meet our target of validating data entry at every participating hospital.

Data Entry Deadlines

Data entry deadline for the validation study is
10pm Monday 18th March 2019

GlobalSurg and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

New data protection rules come into force in Europe at the end of May 2018.
As subscribers to our newsletter we will continue to email you regarding GlobalSurg research projects and updates.
If you no longer wish to receive emails from us you can unsubscribe to this list any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link below

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Forward

The GlobalSurg network grows stronger and stronger thanks to your help. Please share this email with national and international colleagues, especially those in countries not yet represented on our registration map.