What does data curation involve?

Data curation refers to the active management and maintenance of data throughout its lifecycle, which includes the processes of collecting, organizing, storing, and preserving data sets to ensure they remain accessible and usable over time. This involves not just the initial gathering of data, but also the ongoing practices involved in quality control, metadata management, and data preservation strategies. Data curation is essential for research, data analysis, and enabling high-quality outcomes from data-driven decision-making.

The other options do not align with the core definition of data curation. Creating and organizing software pertains more to software development and engineering, marketing health data involves aspects of business and public relations rather than data management, and monitoring healthcare providers is related to supervision or oversight in clinical settings rather than the management of data itself.