A scoping review on identifying aspects of data integrity in health information systems for South Africa

Abstract

Poor data integrity hinders health information exchange, research, and reporting. Lack of standardized documentation guidelines will lead to further data integrity issues due to inaccurate, inconsistent, or incomplete information. The lack of ensuring the integrity of external data before its incorporation into health information systems can lead to data unfit for use in a clinical setting. Security measures to ensure data integrity must be taken to determine who is authorized to perform important tasks on health information. Integrated delivery networks must develop techniques for creating, transmitting, and enforcing standardized data integrity policies and procedures. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify data integrity aspects for consideration in hospital information systems through a scoping review. Only 28 papers were found to be most suitable out of 398 publications initially identified in the field. The results indicated that data integrity requirements, data governance, data integrity training, and data safeguards are key aspects of data integrity.