Strengths and Limits of Swiss Health Statistics

Except of the cause of death statistics, even at the beginning of the 1990s there
were virtually no health data sources covering the whole of Switzerland. Since then important new data sources like the Swiss Health Survey, the Medical Statistics of Swiss Hospitals and several other surveys have been established. Too often these data are barely validated and hampered by limited comparability of definitions.
Using complementary data from different data sources can help to close important knowledge gaps, e.g. concerning prevalence of chronic diseases. The comparison
of age- and gender-specific distributions, also from data sources based on different settings and assessment methods, does not only enable more valid and reliable prevalence estimates but also provides important clues for the evaluation of
strengths and limits of specific data sources.

• Evidence based design recommendations for studies of prevalence of multimorbidity: Improving comparability of estimates.
  Holzer BM, Siebenhuener K, Bopp M, Minder CE.
  Population Health Metrics 2017;15:9
• Record Linkage der Todesfälle in der Medizinischen Statistik der Krankenhäuser und der Statistik der Sozialmedizinischen Institutionen 2002-2012 mit der Swiss
  National Cohort (Swiss National Cohort Report Nr. 9).
  Zellweger U, Bopp M.
  Forschung und Dokumentation 38, Institut für Epidemiologie, Biostatistik und Prävention der Universität Zürich, 2017
• Swiss National Cohort study group. Calibration adjustments to address bias in mortality analyses due to informative sampling - a census-linked survey analysis in Switzerland.
  Moser A, Bopp M, Zwahlen M,
  PeerJ 2018;6:e4376