Data Sources for Health Demography

Abstract

The health care industry has always presented something of a paradox. Although historically awash in data, it has been very difficult to convert these data into usable information. Health data have often not been very accessible even to the organizations that generate the data. When data sets have been accessible, they typically have been of limited use to health demographers and other analysts, since they were usually generated for some operational or administrative purpose. Further, even when data have been made accessible, the tools were not available for their efficient management and exploitation.