Working on Epidemiological Data: Problems Encountered and Lessons Learned

In addition to the epidemiological analysis of hospital admissions and outpatient services, the INTEGRA Project envisages the development of a sexual and reproductive health index that aims to identify situations at risk or which require ‘targeted’ interventions. This implies the need to identify suitable indicators, whose characteristics are described in the first part of the article, with reference to the specific needs of the INTEGRA Project. A discussion follows on the distinction between micro and macro level indicators and some examples are illustrated. Some problems found by analyzing the Hospital Discharge Cards are then described and some solutions are proposed. A final specific topic concerns the implications of the transition froma database having ‘hospital demission’ as unit of analysis to a data archive based on ‘patient’ as the unit of analysis.