Automated coding and selection of causes of death in Peru: a descriptive study, 2016-2019

Abstract

Objective: to describe software performance in the automatic selection of the underlying cause of death in Peru, between 2016 and 2019. Methods: this was a descriptive study on the software performance in the automated selection of the underlying cause of death over the years (chisquare test for trend) and the correlation between the type of death certificate and software performance (correlation coefficient and coefficient of determination). Results: a total of 446,217 death certificates were analyzed; the proportion of death certificates with the underlying cause of death increased from 69.6% in 2016 to 78.8% in 2019 (p-value < 0.001); it could be seen a direct linear correlation between electronic death certificates and software performance (correlation coefficient = 0.95; R2 = 0.89). Conclusion: the software showed good performance in the automatic selection of the underlying cause of death, with a significant increase between 2016 and 2019.