There is a growing debate on the restricted availability of good health and health care data in the Netherlands. Internet stimulates data sharing, but market forces drive health care institutions in the opposite direction. Some researchers expect that the internet revolution will stimulate researchers to bypass health care institutions and to ask the citizens-of-the-future who construct their own health records in digital health vaults, to share these records with them. Internet surveys, panels and internet ‘questions of the day’ are helpful and give quicker results than more traditional surveys, but need to be used with care keeping in mind selective responsiveness. The Dutch Health Inspectorate together with health care professionals developed public available performance indicators for nine different health care branches and is planning to enrich them with other data. International data sharing is growing because international comparisons are in great demand. The Dutch government is making an overview of the Dutch data deliverances to international agencies like EU, OECD and WHO to improve national coordination of this. The Dutch website Zorggegevens.nl entails metadata of 180 health and health registries. Its purpose is to stimulate the use of these databases. The Dutch government plans to enlarge this website into a national information platform on new developments and innovations in health and health care data registries in the Netherlands.
With contributions of Stokx, Stoop, Geelhoed, Achterberg and Molenaar.
Keywords: data sharing, health vaults, internet surveys, health registries, health care registries, international comparisons, meta databases