Speaker
Daniel Witte is Danish Diabetes Academy Professor of Diabetes Epidemiology; based at the department of Public Health, Aarhus University in collaboration withthe Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University Hospital.
Abstract
The Nordic countries have a long tradition of maintaining national registers covering demography, social and economic indicators, medication and health outcomes, making these registers linkable at the individual level and accessible to researchers. This combination of national registers makes it possible to study research questions at the level of the entire population, enabling the study of small subgroups, rare outcomes and detailed longitudinal patterns. Combination of register data with data from cohorts and biobanks further expands the research possibilities.
Using examples from diabetes epidemiology, this lecture will review some of the major contributions of Danish register-based research and explore possibilities for the future as an ever larger array of linkages is made. As an example of upcoming advanced linkage initiatives, the lecture will review the structure and aims of the Danish Social Network database, which will document familial and social connections between all individuals in the Danish population.