The role of health data standards in developing countries

Healthcare organizations have recognized that there are potential limitations with their clinical information systems. Interoperability barriers between different systems have resulted in medical information being collected by different people or systems which has made it difficult to understand, compare and exchange. There are many health data standards to try and overcome these issues, but in many developing countries these have not been adopted. This paper investigates health data standards and their roles in Saudi tertiary hospitals and provides insights into the issues, and recommendations which can be used by academics and practitioners to develop the planning of health data standards.