EU Diabetes Best Information through Regional Outcomes - Technology Transfer

Aim: of the DG-SANCO project Best Information through Regional Outcomes (BIRO), Technology Transfer was to evaluate the scientific achievements to unidirectional migration of data, from various local data sources to regional data warehouses (aggregated data) and from there to the central Shared European Diabetes Information System (SEDIS), where data analysis is performed to obtain a set of 54 internationally comparable healthcare quality indicators.

Methods: we analysed the process steps for setup and execution of the BIRO software tools to create and deliver structured data in XML format (exchange of aggregate data) from local data sources and to further query and process these data with BIRO statistical reporting engines. This specific activity has explored the practice of querying data and identifying obstacles, risks and incentives of the dissemination of sharing data. BIRO was concerned with the collaborative creation of documents and software tools, to extract and sharing data from multiple sources. We have used a sample of real data from Romania.

Results: we have shown the broad scope of the BIRO project regarding technology transfer and the main issues surrounding evaluation and implementation of the BIRO software tools. Specifically gains were made in knowledge and ability in the areas of data preparation, which was encapsulated in the BIROBox Application. BIRO takes advantage of new Open Source technologies (free license and access to the source code) and involves the unidirectional migration of data, from diabetes care locations to the BIRO local data warehouse and from there to the central SEDIS for BIRO data analysis with various reporting tools and statistical applications developed through the project. The practical problems encountered during installation and use of BIRO software by real users was given. The aim of this effort was to document all difficulties and pitfalls to create a knowledge base of solutions, which is going to be implemented in an extended scope in Europe.

Conclusions: The BIRO project not only created an infrastructure to make data from national or regional registers available for international comparison of health indicators, it also provided valuable tools and information to set up these registers. In a collaborative and interdisciplinary effort of the project has to be continued for further implementation in other European countries. At national level the availability of health indicators for comparison and benchmarking at an European level must be an integral part of the national health information strategies. For this reason, it will be vital to directly involve national health care management (e.g. Ministries of Health, Diabetes Associations, etc.) in the follow-up project EU-BIROD for further successful implementation.