EUCID participants come from 19 countries

Efforts were made to include all (future) EU Member States in the project, via diabetes associations, diabetes health care professionals and governments. This resulted in the actual participation of the 19 partners shown in the List of partners collaborating in EUCID. This includes 18 EU Member States and Turkey.

The collected data come from a variety of sources

For most countries or indicators, complete national data were not available, but often data could be provided from a regional source. The data sources were divided into four groups: (1) national complete, (2) national sample, (3) regional complete, (4) regional sample. For the indicators concerning the diabetic population, five different sources could be discerned: (a) administrative databases, (b) national surveys, (c) clinical database, primary care, (d) clinical database, primary + secondary care, and (e) clinical database, secondary care. All relevant properties of the national and regional data sources are listed in the code book (annex one of the EUCID report).

In order to allow age-standardization, data were collected, where possible by 10-year age bands. Standardization was done according to the European Standard Population (Waterhouse et al., 1976), when national data for the general population were available. Diabetes population data could not be standardized since there is no standard population for diabetes .

Data availability showed large variations between indicators and between countries

It appeared that the availability of data varied considerably between indicators and between countries, as shown in Overview of data availability per country. For the in depth analysis per country see the EUCID report.

From the table, it can be seen that some indicators were available for almost all countries, such as prevalence of diabetes, while others were almost completely unavailable, such as timely laser treatment for diabetic retinopathy.

Data collection has been accurate, but improvements are possible

For some indicators, the data sources were different in different countries, so that the comparability of the indicators is not optimal. In the area of testing people with diabetes, some data originated from databases that might not reflect the average situation.

The future EUBIROD (European Best Indicators through Regional Outcomes Diabetes) project will combine national and regional indicators in an automated way, so that care planners can always have reliable indicators at their disposal. In this project two types of indicator data will be collected:

• national data on risk factors and prevalence and incidence of diabetes and major complications like stroke, blindness and kidney function replacement therapy;
• data on regional or even local quality and quantity of care from clinical databases like indicators on blood pressure and average blood glucose.