7.2. Data sources

Governments and private agencies maintain systems that continually or periodically collect data on injuries that are used to measure trends and identify factors related to injury. These are collectively called injury surveillance systems. Several data sources need to be put together to get a full picture of the magnitude of the burden of injuries in the EU. These data sources comprise:

Horizontal data - routine health data on mortality and morbidity data based on the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD)

Vertical data – coming from particular injury sectors e.g. police recorded data for the traffic sector and insurance recorded data for the occupational sector

All data are collected for a specific purpose – guiding policy and accounting of services e.g. – and with a specific methodology. This may lead to problems of incompatibility when comparing and pooling the different data sources.

The following data sources are used to establish a comprehensive view of injuries in the EU: