Advancing disaster epidemiology and response: developing a national disaster-victim database

Background. The need to further disaster preparedness has resulted in a call for more comprehensive disaster research. Past disaster research has, for the most part, been limited by the inability to obtain complete medical data from victims of disasters. A national disaster-victim database (NDVD) can be developed that will facilitate collection andaggregation of disaster-victim medical data from health care facilities. Three aspects of the NDVD are discussed: Data Requirements. Medical records of disaster victims must be standardized before being uploaded from various databases into the NDVD. Existing data dictionaries provide formats in which data elements can become standardized. Once standardized, data sets from different facilities can be pooled andsubjected to analyses. Database System. The three tiers of the NDVD system are: 1) medical data are collected at the point of care, 2) medical data are entered into databases andconverted into a specific format, and3) formatted data sets are uploaded to the...