Challenges for the region include building infrastructure linkages to support economic cooperation and integration, which are considered weaker than that those found in China's Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions [5].
It aims to improve the ability to conduct, use and promote research through providing training, funding, infrastructure, linkages and career pathways [ 1- 4].
The Comic Relief/Vodafone RedAlert partnership may have enabled £2m to be raised in 90 seconds through SMS fundraising, but after all the interfacing, tweeting and poking, it still seems that infrastructure (road linkages, storage facilities, a good legal system and access to finance) and the will of people to look beyond themselves and their own networks are still vital for development to happen.
As well as scalable linkage services, an effective national linkage infrastructure needs to deliver high quality linkage results.
WA has a strong history of data linkage infrastructure through the Western Australian Data Linkage System (WADLS), one of few such systems worldwide [ 12].
These results show the feasibility of large scale data linkage infrastructure, producing high quality results through efficient linkage processes.
There is still a need for better representations of the water infrastructure and corresponding linkages with the energy sector.
By comparison, the BC GN Registry is unique in that it is integrated into the existing provincial CKD health delivery infrastructure and uses linkages to laboratory and administrative databases to minimize laborious data entry, improving data quality and quantity.
Table 1 provides a summary by state and data collection of the missing data within the variables supplied for linkage.> As WA and NSW had well established linkage infrastructure in place, records from these states had been linked and extensively reviewed within their own jurisdiction and assigned a jurisdiction-specific linkage key.
In Australia, research carried out using linked health data has led to numerous health policy changes [ 1, 2], and the success of previous linkage efforts has led to the development of national linkage infrastructure [ 3].
The success of linkage-based research has led to the development of significant national linkage infrastructure [ 3].
