Datasets
The Ontario Health Data Platform is comprised of datasets containing personal health information (PHI) collected from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and/or Ontario Health where the Minister of Health has made a determination that the datasets containing PHI are necessary for the purpose of researching, analyzing, investigating, preventing, responding to or alleviating COVID-19 or its effects, or evaluating or monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on the management of, the allocation of resources to or planning for all or part of the health system. The PHI data elements within the datasets collected by the Ministry of Health for the purposes of the Ontario Health Data Platform are limited to that which is necessary to fulfill the purposes of the Ontario Health Data Platform. Data minimization techniques are applied to the personal health information such that pseudonymized data is disclosed.
The following table describes the datasets that are contained within the Ontario Health Data Platform as well as the description and rationale.
| Data Source | Dataset | Full Name | Description | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Ministry of Health via Ontario Health | RPDB | Registered Persons Database | RPDB contains information on persons registered under OHIP and those who are eligible for the Ontario Drug Program. This database is critical to a number of key programs that deliver health services to the public, for example, access to hospital services, physician services and drug benefits. | Contains core demographics data on Ontarians such as their sex, age, residence, etc., variables that can be used to identify potential predictors of COVID-19 and build machine learning (ML) models that can recognize different groups in the population with potentially different COVID-19 experiences/outcomes. |
| 2. Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) via Ontario Health | NACRS | National Ambulatory Care Reporting System | NACRS at CIHI is a national database which contains data for all hospital-based and community-based ambulatory care: day surgery, outpatient and community-based clinics, and emergency departments (EDs). Client visit data is collected at time of service in participating facilities. NACRS collects demographic, administrative, clinical, and service-specific data for ED, day surgery, and other ambulatory care visits. | Contains Ontario data pertaining to EDs including ICD10 codes describing presenting condition and diagnosis, essential to COVID-19 projects aimed at developing models for individual risk prediction. Full dataset can be used to help train more accurate ML models of features of the healthcare system. |
| 3. Ministry of Health via the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) | OHIP Claims History Database | Ontario Health Insurance Program Claims | This dataset contains information on all claims items processed. Includes patient, service and amount paid information. The assessment and processing of claims is a financial record of money paid to a provider for services billed on behalf of Ontario residents. | Completeness of the OHIP claims database can serve a critical role in training accurate ML models; specific data elements are important complements to other key administrative datasets (NACRS, DADS, RPDB) essential to COVID-19 risk prediction projects. Multiple instances across datasets of information such as date of encounter improve accuracy. |
| 4. Canadian Institute for Health Information via Ontario Health | DAD | Discharge Abstract Database | DAD at the CIHI is a national database designed to capture administrative, clinical, and demographic information on hospital discharges (including deaths, sign-outs, and transfers). | Data elements cover clinical, demographic, and administrative information at a provincial level essential to COVID-19 research project data analysis which are known to indicate strong dependencies on demographics and clinical risk factors. Multiple datasets improve accuracy by capturing events missing from other datasets or identifying variance in events captured in multiple datasets. |
| 5. Canadian Institute for Health Information via Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | OMHRS | Ontario Mental Health Reporting System | OMHRS analyzes and reports information submitted to CIHI about all individuals receiving adult mental health services in Ontario, as well as some individuals receiving services in youth inpatient beds and selected facilities in other provinces. OMHRS includes information about mental and physical health, social supports, and service use, as well as care planning, outcome measurement, quality improvement and case-mix funding applications. | This dataset covers a patient population where some features, such as previous addictions, might be useful proxies for other risk factors for COVID-19. These data can also be used to track mental health effects of COVID-19 and social distancing and other policies. Such data also helps to increase size of datasets used to train ML models in features of the health care system, improving accuracy of COVID-19 related models. |
| 6. Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | ODB | Ontario Drug Benefits Plan | ODB contains Ontario Drug Benefit Program information, including recipients, payment, claims, and pharmacy and practitioner information. The ODB Program provides drug benefits for Ontarians aged 65 and older, residents of long-term care homes, homes for special care, recipients of professional home services and social assistance and recipients of the Trillium Drug Program. | Drug type and utilization data is an important clinical factor necessary to understanding existing conditions or risk factors related to COVID-19, essential to developing risk prediction models. |
| 7. Canadian Institute for Health Information via Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | CCRS | Continuing Care Reporting System | CCRS at CIHI is a national database that contains demographic, clinical, functional, and resource utilization information on individuals who receive continuing care services in hospitals or long-term care homes in Canada. | This data is specific to long-term care populations who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, where proposed projects on risk prediction could benefit from more targeted data. |
| 8. Ontario Health | eCTAS | Electronic Canadian Triage & Acuity Scale | eCTAS solution is a triage decision support system. It is designed by clinical and technical experts and based on proven research from the University of Alberta. It seeks to:
| Province-wide, standardized, and real time triage data is needed to develop prediction models for COVID-19-related Emergency Room volumes/admissions. |
| 9. Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | OLIS - C19 | Ontario Laboratories Information System – COVID 19 subset | This dataset includes data on laboratory tests covered by OHIP. OLIS data is used to analyze Ontarians’ use of health services and satisfaction with the delivery of laboratory services paid for by Ontario taxpayers. OLIS is a database that is under the Ministry of Health’s custodianship. OLIS-C19 is a subset of the OLIS information repository that contains lab test orders and results from hospitals, community labs and public health labs specific to COVID-19. The data feed does not include records with a consent block in place. | Lab data providing province-wide testing results is critical to all projects aimed at developing models related to COVID-19 prediction. |
| 10. Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | COVaxON | Provincial COVID-19 Vaccine Solution – COVax Ontario | COVaxON data includes patient demographic information; sociodemographic information and vaccine administration information (e.g. product, dose, adverse event following immunization). | The purpose of this dataset is to collect information to understand characteristics of individuals who receive a vaccine for COVID-19 to support and inform the effective rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine program in the province. |
| 11. Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | CCM (COVID-19 Module) | Public Health Case Contact and Management Solution | CCM includes patient demographic information, public health units, travel information and case and outbreak data. | The purpose of this dataset is for reporting all COVID-19 case and contact information in Ontario. The database is used in Ontario Public Health Units. |
| 12. Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | NMS | Narcotics Monitoring System | The NMS includes information on dispensed prescriptions for narcotics, controlled substances, and other monitored drugs. | The purpose of the NMS is to collect dispensing data from dispensaries in respect of all dispensed narcotics, controlled substances, and other monitored drugs, irrespective of whether the prescription is paid for under a publicly funded drug program, through private insurance, or by cash for educational and public health and reporting possible criminal conduct to law enforcement agencies. The PHI is required to conduct analysis with respect to the evaluation, planning and monitoring of the impact of COVID-19 on the health system, and to support related research for preventing, responding to, or alleviating COVID-19 or its effects, specifically in the areas of prescribing practices and use of narcotic analgesics (i.e. opioids), non-narcotic controlled drugs (i.e. stimulants, benzodiazepines, barbituates), and other monitored drugs (e.g. testosterone) in the province. |
| 13. Ministry of Health via ICES via Ontario Health | OLIS (ICES curated) | Ontario Laboratories Information System | The OLIS includes patient demographic information (e.g., birth date, sex, patient address; healthcare provider data (e.g., practitioner licensing numbers); and clinical data (e.g., laboratory test results, additional information on test requisitions and test types). | The purpose of this dataset is to provide authorized health care providers with access to laboratory test orders, results from hospitals, community laboratories and public health laboratories. As patients move between hospitals, family physicians, home care and long-term care settings, OLIS makes viewing current and past test results easier and enables treatment decisions to be made at the point of care. The information collected serves the following purposes: providing a comprehensive and complete laboratory test history, monitoring progress of treatments, supporting chronic disease management and creates system cost savings by reducing administrative time spent sending lab results and duplicating tests. The PHI is required to conduct analysis with respect to the evaluation, planning, and monitoring of the impact of COVID-19 on the health system, and to support related research for preventing, responding to, or alleviating COVID-19 or its effects, specifically in the areas of clinical lab testing, and disease detection and monitoring. |