Health Ministry website adds accessible, updated data on the medical system

“Data World,” a digital dashboard that includes extensive data on the quality of medical treatment, public complaints about health services and patients’ experiences with them, has been launched by the Health Ministry in Jerusalem.

Until recently, the ministry had not provided much to the public regarding access to comparisons among medical institutions and services. It is the first government ministry to publish extensive data for the public, allowing citizens to get a broad snapshot of the health system and its quality of care.

The ministry said its new dashboard is a “breakthrough” that continues its policy of enabling access to transparent information for decision-makers, researchers and the general public, with the aim of encouraging discussion and research and gain insight from the information.

Data World contains three sections that use many graphs and will soon add a fourth one:

 * Quality metrics that examine the level of clinical treatment in hospitals, geriatric institutions, psychiatric hospitals and well-baby centers (tipot halav) around the country. This makes possible comparisons among medical institutions and follows how they improve or decline over the years.* Complaints against the four public health funds, comparisons and changes over time, along with the results of complaints filed against them.* Patient experience surveys examining the levels of service and treatment patients received in hospital wards (emergency rooms, internal medicine, surgical and other departments). Users can compare the hospitals and look for changes over time.* In the coming months, the ministry said it would publish additional data, with emphasis on the field of child development and analysis of inequality in the health system.

The ministry said Data World continues the digital revolution led by its digital technologies division to display clear and accessible information on the quality of the health system in various fields and advanced data tools, leading to a data-based discourse exchange with public and medical institutions.

Last year, the Justice Ministry awarded the Health Ministry its prize for public transparency and data-based decision-making for these developments.

“In a world where social networks are distributed, [and there is] much false information – some of which may harm public health – Data World allows the public to access reliable and transparent information easily and quickly,” Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman Tov said.

Rona Kaiser Jachniuk, the ministry’s director of digital technologies, said: “Expanding the worlds of content is another breakthrough step in transparency to the public, another strategic step to share data and analyses from a wide range of content. It took us several months and included teams from various specialties, including development, analysis, user experience and more.”