Good quality data is essential for making evidence-based decisions when managing health programs. Assessing and improving overall data quality in a health system goes beyond implementing data collection validations. Ongoing assessments are necessary to ensure that collected data is within expected ranges and that the data flows between different paper forms, registers, and information systems are timely and accurate.
Where necessary, corrective measures like action plans, capacity building, and other activities should be recommended and implemented to improve data quality.
PSI’s RDQA methodology was based on the DQA tool originally developed by various multilateral and bilateral organizations in 2007 as an evaluation tool for external agents to an organization. The RDQA tool is designed to be used by personnel who are part of the organization. The tool is available as a series of MS Excel templates as part of Measure's data quality tools collection.
Improved data quality allows for better decision-making at all levels of health systems. At the service level, routine data quality assessments are a critical activity to:
Verify the quality of reported data against source documents.
Identify causes of poor-quality data by assessing the ability of the data management system to collect, manage and report quality data.
Support the development of data quality improvement plans to strengthen the data management and reporting system to improve data quality.
As of 2023, PSI has implemented the RDQA app in over ten countries across several health areas, including HIV, VMMC, TB, SRHR, IMCI, Safe Motherhood, Malaria, DREAMS, and WASH.
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