ICHI-2 is a web-based application containing health indicators used by WHO-Europe, OECD and Eurostat in their websites. More precisely, these are the Health-For-All database of the World Health Organisation (WHO), European region, the Health Data CD-ROM of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the New Cronos database of Eurostat.

ICHI-2 offers an easy entry to the indicator definitions used by the international organisations in their databases. This allows for a quick comparison between indicators and their definitions, in one coherent and structured system.

All indicators were grouped according to the taxonomy devised by ECHI-2. In a few cases, specific indicators were not included because they were considered to be insufficiently related to public health. The indicators presented on this website are therefore a selection of the most relevant indicator names and definitions. The indicators and their definitions on the ICHI-2 website have been last updated June 2005 and will not be updated anymore.

The first ICHI products included a book (ICHI version 1.1, Copenhagen, 1999) and a WHO Access database. They were developed by WHO-Euro and supported by DG Sanco of the European Commission. The original purpose was to help in avoiding duplications in data collection by different international organisations. Different from ICHI-1, ICHI-2 is now being developed as an Internet application. This would allow for easier access and easier updating.

ICHI-2: the current application

The WHO indicators and their definitions have been provided by the WHO Copenhagen, and have been last updated June 2005. The indicators and definitions from OECD have been taken from the OECD Health Data 2005 CD-ROM. The indicators and definitions from Eurostat in the ICHI-2 application have been partly taken from the original ICHI-1 list of 1998, and have been partly updated by using indicators delivered by Eurostat in December 2004. Not all definitions have been added to the (Eurostat) indicators yet. The complete list of indicators as proposed by the ECHI project by June 2005 is also available in the ICHI application.

The application offers the following entries: ECHI taxonomy: you enter the indicator list by the classes of the ECHI taxonomy; you can choose to have all indicators within a given group or only the ones coming from one of the four lists (WHO, OECD, Eurostat, ECHI).

Search indicators: this gives users the possibility to search for indicators by specific keywords.

Comments and questions on the application can be sent to pgn.kramers@rivm.nl. .