All of the six fully invitational programmes also had a centralised national or regional screening registration database arranged on an individual basis.
We linked these databases together on an individual level using an encrypted unique Ontario health card number given to all Ontario residents.
It should be noted here that there was not a one-to-one relationship between individual items entered in the hand search database and items recovered from the on-line database because an individual article could be determined to serve more than one purpose in the context of the clinical HEDGES study.
Each of these boxes is recorded on the database as an individual dispensed prescription, leading to double counting.
Since 1968, all citizens in Denmark have been assigned a unique 10-digit civil personal registration (CPR) number, which goes throughout all the Danish administrative registries and clinical databases, allowing for unambiguous linkage on an individual level and tracking of patients who have died, emigrated, or been admitted to different hospitals.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) of Japan regularly conducts comprehensive surveys of living conditions that provide a large database on individual problems and concerns, including information on a variety of personal problems, work condition issues and psychological distress [ 12].
Due to privacy regulations and according to the agreement with the hospitals not to perform any analysis on hospital level, we were unable to compare both databases neither on a hospital nor on an individual level.
On an individual level, this database links records from the administrative registers provided by Statistics Sweden and the National Board of Health and Welfare, including comprehensive data about socioeconomic conditions, hospitalization and causes of death, with the information from the VIP.
An improved database on individual chemical toxicity developed using new techniques or end points (e.g., genetics, endocrine testing) may improve the assessment of individual chemicals and aid in the development of computer models.
The FinDM II database based on a national individual level linkage scheme of health insurance and care registers was established for epidemiological monitoring of diabetes and its complications [ 22].
