Integration of Data on the Long-term Care for Elderly People from Heterogeneous Sources for Research Purpose

The rapid increase in the demand for long-term care of elderly people leads to a need for a better understanding of resource use, therefore a better knowledge of the survival patterns. The data necessary to model survival and resource use in long-term care are available, but distributed among different institutions – purchasers of care, e.g. Local Authorities in the UK, and providers of care in nursing and residential homes and in the community. Building models of survival and resource use requires the availability of historical data over a long period of time. An added difficulty is the anonymous and confidential nature of the data. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the design of a database that integrates anonymous data from such heterogeneous sources. A procedure allowing for systematic update of the database is also presented.