Mondriaan: A dutch 'population' laboratory

OBJECTIVES: Many excellent health care databases are available in The Netherlands for (pharmaco-)epidemiologic research. However, in isolation these data remain scattered and have limitations with regard to sample sizes and/or detail of the registered information.The objective of Mondriaan is to optimize access to en linkage of routine health care databases in the The Netherlands for (pharmaco- )epidemiologic research. METHODS: We have built an ICT infrastructure for collection and linkage of healthcare/research data in The Netherlands. To protect privacy, pseudonimisation and linkage is performed by a trusted third party (TTP). A data catalogue on subject level has been developed to allow queries within the integrated databases to support designing (pharmaco-) epidemiologic studies (incl. sample size calculations, assessment of completeness of data). RESULTS: We are able to routinely link all pharmacy records from the National Foundation of Pharmaceutical Statistics (SFK) (n>14,000,000) on a patient base to several routine health care databases such as the Almere Health Care database (n=200,000), the Julius GP Network (n=200,000), and the AGIS claims database (n=1,200,000). Currently we are integrating several other databases in the The Netherlands. CONCLUSIONS: The project will deliver a large-scale, high-quality data platform for innovative (pharmaco-)epidemiologic research.