Large volumes of data, especially insurance claims for health service utilization, are routinely collected by health systems in many low-and middle-income countries. The data can provide a valuable source of real-time information on the state of the population¡¯s health, making it a useful tool for policymakers. However, the data is often buried in health system databases and is not always easy to collect and analyze. To unlock this issue, Advance UHC supports the development of unique training workshops focused on strengthening health policy through improved analysis of healthcare claim databases.
These courses train participants to use software to analyze their existing insurance claim data, using them to formulate policies that drive decision making to strengthen Universal Health Coverage. Analysis of claims data could identify disease patterns, assess quality of care, support resource allocation, predict future expenditures and sustainability, and guide budget proposals and priorities.
ľ¹ÏÓ°Ôº team who developed the course continues to update the content so that each workshop is customized to the country or countries context. In 2025, two courses have already been organized. The latest one was held in February in Malaysia with over 100 participants from the Ministry of Health, insurance agencies and hospital networks. Earlier in January, it was offered in Thailand at the , an annual international conference that brings together public health leaders and stakeholders from around the world to discuss high priority health issues.
Participants of the training workshops, usually spread over a few days, learn how to apply fundamental analytical concepts to claims data, discuss different methodologies of collecting data, the techniques available to analyze them, and ways to produce and communicate results. The sessions cover a wide range of topics¡ªassessing in-patient length of stay, health expenditures analysis, calculating rates of potentially preventable hospitalizations, and analyzing ¡®excess¡¯ Cesarean-section deliveries. Participants also learned about using healthcare claims data to detect fraud (through rule-based automated data check and targeted sampling), to estimate direct health costs of smoking, and to assess the impact of climate change on healthcare utilization during heatwaves (which yields policy implications for health response to future climate events).
The first workshop was conducted in Viet Nam in 2023 for sixty people representing seven countries¡ªCambodia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, and Viet Nam. It was strongly received and throughout 2024 further sessions were requested, including:
¡¤ A 2-day workshop with 40 participants for the Prince Mahidol Awards in Bangkok in January.
¡¤ A half-day workshop with 20 participants as part of the Asia Pacific Health Financing Forum, in Colombo, Sri Lanka in June
¡¤ Training for 50 Indonesia policy/data analysts (30 from MoH and 20 from the National Health Insurance Administrator Agency ¨C BPJS-K) in Bandung, Indonesia, in May.
¡¤ Training for 50 policy/data analysts in Bali, Indonesia, in September.
¡¤ A session was presented to a delegation from the Maldives during a study tour to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in September.
¡¤ A session on health claims data analysis was conducted during the in Nagasaki, Japan, in November.
Most recently, a session was run in July 2025 as part of the International Health Economics Association's pre-Congress in Bali. There are plans to take it to more countries in the East Asia and Pacific region in future.