Table 3.

Patient data should be

Quality	Description
Dynamic	Health conditions and the circumstances in which patients managed them are changeable and data need to be collected that reflect change over time as a static snapshot could be misleading, and less than useful.
Holistic	Data should acknowledge the complexity of multiple ‘worlds’ that the patient is part of, rather than single systems or single perspectives (e.g., an individual may be a patient in one context, but a carer in another), to reflect the complexity of living with health and illness and avoid a reductionist focus on limited interaction with specific health services.
Affective	Data should be ‘more than numbers’ and include emotions, experiences and perceptions of the quality of care, not just type of quantity. The experience of health and illness mattered most to patients and data that excluded this experiential information would, by design, neglect patient realities and priorities.