GENERAL-PRACTICE DATA-RETRIEVAL - THE NORTHERN-IRELAND PROJECT

Objective - To develop an epidemiological database of morbidity in the community as presented to general practitioners and to support epidem iological research in general practice. Design - The project is a sent inel network of 23 general practices in Northern Ireland that report t he incidence of a list of selected diseases to a central unit for anal ysis. Results - Results are presented for depression, diabetes, and my ocardial infarction. The age - sex distributions of diabetes and myoca rdial infarction are comparable with other published data but the inci dence of depression is under estimated. Conclusions - The importance o f complete accuracy of data reported within sentinel networks depends on the purposes for which information is to be used. For some diagnose s, such as diabetes and acute myocardial infarction, the accuracy of t he reported incidence is high while for other diseases, such as depres sion, where diagnostic behaviour varies more between doctors, the figu res are much less reliable.