Enhancing Data Completeness: The Importance of Non-Mandatory Fields in Incident Reports

Incident reports from licensed facilities are submitted to the Public Health Agency of Canada through the online Biosecurity Portal. The Biosecurity Portal has built-in data validation rules that require reporters to complete all mandatory fields. We also encourage reporters to complete as many of the additional relevant, but non-mandatory, fields as possible. The data from these incident reports inform the Centre for Biosecurity’s biosafety recommendations, knowledge translation and exchange of resources and contribute to the numerous studies on exposure and non-exposure incidents that Laboratory Incident Notification Canada undertakes.

Among the mandatory incident reports submitted through the Biosecurity Portal between June 1, 2022, and June 1, 2024, relevant but non-mandatory fields such as the incident date weren’t included by reporters in:

•        7.5% of exposure reports
•        5.5% of follow-up reports
•        9.9% of non-exposure reports

Similarly, the biological agent involved, if known, wasn’t provided by reporters in 3.3% of exposure reports and 1.8% for follow-up reports.

Within the affected person section of the follow-up report, the years of laboratory experience of those involved in exposure incidents wasn’t mentioned by reporters in 10.3% of exposure incident reports, the description of the incident intervention in 19.4% and the explanation of the route of exposure in 42.4%.

Though completion of these fields isn’t mandatory, such details can provide useful information to improve contextual understanding of exposure incidents.

For details on mandatory reporting obligations, refer to Notification and Reporting Under the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act and Regulations. Non-compliance with these obligations is an offence under the Human Pathogen and Toxins Act and may result in enforcement actions.

For questions related to incident reporting, email biosafety.biosecurite@phac-aspc.gc.ca.