How can we tell whether a healthcare database is reliable before using it to investigate a disease, develop a new medical technology or plan healthcare services?
This question is addressed by an international study involving researchers from the Biomedical Data Science Lab (BDSLab) at the ITACA Institute of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV).
The research forms part of the European project QUANTUM, funded by Horizon Europe. Within the project, UPV co-leads one of the work packages responsible for designing the assessment system and tool that will generate quality and utility labels for the healthcare data to be shared through the future European Health Data Space (EHDS).
Practices analysed across 27 organisations in 13 countries
The initial technological landscape study, coordinated by UPV and published in the European Journal of Public Health, examined how twenty-seven public and private healthcare organisations from thirteen European countries currently assess the quality of their data. The findings revealed considerable variation, with each organisation relying on different tools, procedures and evaluation criteria.
This lack of standardisation makes it more difficult to share and reuse data confidently across countries and institutions. Organisations currently use a wide range of approaches, including in-house tools, commercial software, open-source solutions and manual procedures, which hinders the adoption of a common system.
As Ángel Sánchez García, lead author of the study, explains: “Organisations currently rely on in-house tools, commercial software, open-source solutions and manual procedures, which hinders the adoption of a common system«.
In this regard, Carlos Sáez, project lead at UPV, notes that the objective is to help establish a simple and harmonised labelling system for healthcare data providers, while also enabling data users, through future data portals, to identify datasets that are suitable for safe and trustworthy use across Europe.
“Based on the findings, the researchers propose a multidimensional yet minimally intrusive labelling system, similar to those already used in other sectors to certify specific characteristics of products or services. In this case, the label would provide information on aspects such as technical quality, documentation, coverage and the maturity of the processes used to prepare a database for use by researchers, public authorities or companies», he explains.
The QUANTUM consortium brings together 35 organisations from across Europe. Spanish participation includes not only UPV’s contribution but also the overall coordination of the project by the Aragon Health Sciences Institute.
Development of the QUANTUM Data Quality Labelling Tool
The BDSLab ITACA team has also developed the QUANTUM Data Quality Labelling Tool, one of the project’s key outcomes, which will support the assessment and labelling of data quality and utility.
“The labelling system implemented through the tool has been validated in two rounds of testing at different scales with more than 30 EU institutions. This has resulted in a solution that is centred on end users and validated by them», says Ascensión Doñate, co-author of the study.
The tool developed by the UPV team will therefore support the implementation of the European Health Data Space Regulation and promote the trustworthy and effective use of healthcare data across EU Member States, supporting more efficient data use and better-informed decision-making in healthcare.
REFERENCE:
- Landscape analysis towards data quality and utility labelling in the European Health Data Space. Ángel Sánchez-García, Claudio Proietti Mercuri, Nienke Schutte, Francisco Estupiñán-Romero, Carlos Tellería-Orriols, Ascensión Doñate-Martínez, Juan M García-Gómez, Enrique Bernal-Delgado, Carlos Sáez. European Journal of Public Health, 36 (2) 2026. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckag009
- QUANTUM – The Health Data Quality Labelling tool (1.0.1). (2026). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14637281
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH77dzEvSeo