Added Value and Future Adoption of a New Medical Imaging Technology for Interventional Cardiology

Abstract

level. The development of the performance measures over time may be attributed to changes in organization and management of the system. Methods: As routine data the ATHIS 2006/2007 (a standardized health interview survey), the cause of death registry 2006 and 2007, the hospital discharge datasets from the Austrian DRG system 2006/2007 (KDok/DLD) and diagnoses for the outpatient sector derived from pharmaceutical claims data 2006/2007 (ATC→ICD) -are used to describe the burden of disease regarding Ischemic Heart Disease (ICD9 410-414) with different regional granularity. Methods and results are compared with epidemiological data extracted from a literature search on this topic. To explore the similarity of the results of these different methods of measurement a systematic review of regional correlation is being elaborated. Correlations pointing to a high analogy of the findings in spite of the differences in dimensions measured on the one hand and contra intuitive correlations on the other hand were further explored. Results: The review of regional correlation indicates promising close links between the burden of disease derived from ATC→ICD, ATHIS and cause of death registry data. Hospital discharge data, however, show some contra-intuitive relations towards the other data sets. ConClusions: The use of routine data yields promising opportunities for monitoring the Austrian health care system in a timely and comprehensible way. It enables different aggregation levels regarding regions and periods and leads the way to further research addressing underlying causes for the observed regional variation. The methodology can be transferred to other areas of diseases.