Using data systems to conduct health research in the Caribbean: challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic

We aimed to assess how control measures during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected the metabolic health of people with noncommunicable diseases when severe restrictions on movement and safety concerns prevented the use of traditional methods of health data collection. To identify study participants, we attempted to use hospital laboratory databases in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago. We planned to contact participants by telephone for verbal consent to complete a questionnaire and to extract health information (blood pressure and anthropometric data) from their medical records. In this article, we describe the challenges of collecting data from hospital systems to conduct this research during COVID-19. Only one of the four hospitals selected had dedicated information technology personnel able to access laboratory data systems for sampling. When laboratory data were obtained through the commercial vendor, the lack of unique identifiers made it difficult to link these reports to medical records containing contact information. Outdated telephone contact information limited our ability to recruit potential participants identified by this method. Three of four hospitals used paper records requiring manual chart review. There was inconsistent recording of biomedical data on medical record abstraction. As restrictions lifted, we resorted to traditional methods of recruitment to complete data collection. Strengthening routine data collection and implementing standardized, accessible, electronic data systems are essential to generate actionable health data in the Caribbean.