The first inventory in history of health services on both sides of the Border will help improve the provision of services on an all-Ireland basis, its creator has said.
The all-Ireland health data inventory lists 150 key sources of health-related data in both the Republic and Northern Ireland.
The information will be available on the internet through the all-Ireland health library (AleHL) and the project will be launched later today at a seminar co-hosted with the Health Information and Equality Authority (HIEA) which will be held at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Kildare Street, Dublin.
The inventory has been developed by the Institute of Public Health (IPH) which has an all-Ireland role and the Northern Ireland's Population Health Observatory (INIsPHO).
The IPH has been to the forefront in seeking to strengthen the co-operation between the Government here and the Northern Ireland Executive in relation to health.
Users can log on to search any health topic. They are then presented with a list of all relevant data sources together with details about each of them. If any of the data sources look like it might be useful, users are told how to access them.
The IPH associate director, Dr Kevin Balanda, who compiled the inventory, said it could be of benefit to both jurisdictions which face similar problems in relation to cancer treatment provision, obesity and health inequalities, particularly if they decided to share more services in the future to avoid duplication.
"Users can log onto www.inispho.org and search on any health topic - be it a particular condition [ diabetes or cancer], a lifestyle issue [ smoking] or a broader determinant of health such as education and poverty," said Dr Balanda.
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