Quality Control Techniques and Standards Implemented in the WEBBased“Susy Safe” Registry

The "Susy Safe" project is a European, WEB-based Registry (www.susysafe.org) aimed at collecting data regarding injuries caused by foreign bodies in the upper aero-digestive tract, occurred to children between 0 and 14 years of age. In most of the situations, injury registries are lacking an appropriate mechanism to control the data quality, mostly due to the low incidence of such events and to the corresponding high variability in the doctors reporting about the injury. In the Susy Safe registry, quality is a priority. Therefore, in order to monitor quality both automated and manual data inspections are used. There are automated checks which are based on classical data-entry controls and innovative statistical techniques mimicked from the industrial quality control. The manual inspections are conducted by dedicated medical doctors who check all cases that have an insufficient quality score obtained in the automated control. Having a centralized database and a Web access system, the quality control (QC) process becomes more flexible, improving its accuracy and reducing both the number of persons involved and the necessary time for its accomplishment.