Creating an Open Data City for Healthcare: A Critical Review of Data Management Strategy and Development in China

Abstract

The unexpected increased cases of COVID-19 pressured the healthcare system to be exposed to unprecedented challenges, where healthcare management is a complex but essential process to manage and coordinate all information and resources. Critical problems are emerging in this new routine and demanding a higher efficiency of medical data sharing. It is becoming necessary to improve the performances of city systems and create an open data city for reliable information and data sharing (e.g., medical and testing) for better public awareness and healthcare services. This research aims to critically review past efforts in open data city for healthcare from the perspective of data management strategy and development. China was selected as a representative due to its fast development in healthcare infrastructure and medical big data, and 79 out of 4,611 articles were selected, reviewed, and analyzed. A mixed-method approach was implemented to review and assess the existing efforts of open data city for healthcare through latitudinal and longitudinal analyses from five aspects based on sociotechnical systems: technology, people, infrastructure, processes, and culture. The gaps, missions, and challenges of developing an open data city for healthcare are also summarized, and an open data city healthcare reinforcement framework is proposed accordingly. This research contributes a new multidimensional way to rethink the development of open data city in healthcare and helps establish the state of the art of open data city. © 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.