On December 4-5, the EU-Network of National data administrators in injury surveillance met in Potsdam for its 9th annual meeting. The meeting reviewed the results of the Joint Action on Injury Monitoring in Europe (JAMIE) and the JAMIE-implementations in countries, and discussed progress of work as for making injury data gathering and exchange more sustainable.
Over the past three years, the European Commission, member states and associated/ candidate countries have jointly explored ways to improve EU-level exchange of injury data from emergency departments at hospitals. The overarching objective of JAMIE was to have by the end of 2014 in a great majority of MSs, at least in 22 participating countries, a common hospital based surveillance system for injury prevention in operation which covers also key information on the external causes of injuries.
JAMIE resulted in a EU-wide consensus on IDB data quality requirements, including confidence intervals for IDB based national estimates of injury incidence rates. The great majority of MSs are now able to report IDB-data on a regular base. By now, 26 countries have designated national injury data administrators, who are well trained in the Community approach in injury surveillance and these 26 countries actually delivered data in the course of the project. This has also resulted into an increased use of IDB data for prevention purposes at national level.
JAMIE helped to establish in Europe an unique cross-sector injury information and reporting system. The European Injury Data Base makes it now possible to compare MSs and the level of safety regarding different risk groups, which creates stronger motivation for MSs to improve on their performance. JAMIE provided to the Commission as well as to the MSs the proper support structure and tools in order to make a difference in injury prevention and safety promotion and to initiate focused actions for safety promotion in response to the Council Recommendations for Injury Prevention (2007).
The way forward
The entire IDB system (its methodological basis, geographical coverage, data quality, organisational processes) has been considerably improved, and is therefore ready for starting the next phase, which is the political, technical, and legal consultation process with a view to include the IDB within European Statistical System, as part of the set of public health statistics.
The meeting concluded that for a successful implementation of injury data collection at minimum data set level in ALL Member States, it would be most advantageous to have a mandatory provision or binding agreement amongst health information authorities that such data should be collected and exchanged at EU-level on a regular basis. Given the fact that the majority of Member States are monitoring injuries, such an agreement would not create an additional burden for most of the countries.
As for the collection of more elaborate information that includes details related to the involvement of consumer products, product safety authorities are advised to make additional resources available for enhancing the capacity and infrastructures in health services to be able to collect and deliver such information in a sustainable manner. As consumer safety authorities are the main beneficiaries of such information, they should provide the proper co-financing mechanisms for making such information gathering possible in a cost- efficient manner.
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