Conceptual Framework of Health Indicators: The IDA Model

This paper presents a flexible conceptual framework for pub-lic health indicator databases. The model is a multidimensional-hierarchical representation of statistical data describing health and health influencing factors. The main characteristics of the IDA model are the strong discrimination of concepts (categories of entities enumerated in statistical systems) and dimensions (aspects that divide categories). Top level concepts of known data sources (WHO HFA database, OECD Health Data and ECHI) have been compared and a generalized structure had been created which can represent easily and consistently all the top level concepts of the known data sources. The model has been implemented in a prototype system, which demonstrates the feasibility of the approach.