INDICATORS

Antti Tuomi-Nikula, Ari-Pekka Sihvonen, Jürgen Thelen
5. IMPLEMENTATION OF ECHI INDICATORS
5.1. The implementation process and tools
The first step in the process of implementing the ECHI indicators was to assess the
current situation in EU Member States with regard to indicators and data. This
involved, first, collecting and summarising the evidence already provided by all the
main international sources of information such as Eurostat, the WHO, the OECD
and the previous EU project reports prepared under the DG SANCO Public Health
Programme. The results of this exercise were summarised in the Country Reports, which
outline the availability of health indicator data by country in international databases, as
described in Chapter 4.
The second step in the implementation process was to deepen the information gathered
in the Country Reports by a survey covering all EU Member States, Candidate Countries
and EFTA/EEA countries. It was deemed necessary to gather further information in
order to be able to assess which additional health data and indicators not found in the
international databases are available in each country at the moment and in the near
future, from which sources the health information is derived, and to gain an overview
of the health information and health reporting systems in each of the participating
countries. This was done by the ECHIM Survey.
The specific topics dealt with in the ECHIM Survey were the availability of data for the
ECHI shortlist indicators with regional subdivisions and other breakdowns as well as
time series, possible new data sources and their accessibility and quality, organisations
gathering data and institutes producing health statistics, further details of health
information and health reporting systems, and future expectations. The respondents
were also asked about their initial ideas of how to promote implementation of the ECHI
indicator system in their countries.
The ECHIM Survey was addressed to the ECHIM contact persons in all 32
participating countries. The contact persons are public health specialists who mainly
work for the responsible national authorities, usually public health authorities, regional
public health authorities and statistical offices, and Ministries of Health. The contact
persons were expected to reply to the survey based on their own understanding of the
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