15 years of the Health and Quality Register Conference

The very first Health and Quality Register Conference was held in Tromsø, and since then it has been organised every other year (with the exception of the pandemic year 2020). The most recent conference took place in Oslo in mid-October 2023 and was a collaboration between SKDE, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the Norwegian Directorate for eHealth, and the Norwegian Health Archive. The overarching theme was how health and quality registers can contribute to better and safer patient care.

— How would you summarise the conference in Oslo last autumn?

— The summary is that people were very satisfied. It is a conference that people greatly appreciate. It has become a regular meeting place for everyone working with health registers and quality registers, and it has been well attended and is perceived as extremely useful and one of the most important arenas for knowledge updating and networking, says Philip Skau.

He also points out that the conference has significant value for the organisers.

— The value for SKDE is substantial and an important part of our mission. The conference started as a purely quality register conference and has over time developed into a broad collaboration with stakeholders responsible for statutory health registers and the work with health data nationally.

Announced the establishment of NSM

The leader of the National Service Environment for Medical Quality Registers (NSM) has been involved in the conference since its humble beginnings in Tromsø. Are there any episodes or presentations he remembers very well from previous conferences?

— In 2008, it was of course a much smaller conference. It was just us at SKDE on the organising side. It was also the year when the permanent secretary attended the conference and announced that a national service environment for medical quality registers would be established in Tromsø. No one knew anything about it beforehand.

Will further develop the conference

In the early years, the Health and Quality Register Conference rotated between Tromsø, Trondheim, Bergen, and Oslo. Over the last ten years, the number of participants has ranged between 400 and 600.

— We and the other organisers have tried to remain relevant and have had central themes such as access to health data, use of health data, benefits of health data, and not least research and improvement of health services. There are many participants among those who work directly with registers, both quality registers and those working in the statutory health registers at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the Norwegian Directorate of Health. However, there have also been some administrative personnel, researchers, and leaders in health enterprises, says Skau.

Work on the next conference in 2025 has gradually begun. One aspect that must be taken into account in the planning is that from 1 January 2024, there will be some changes in health administration, including the distribution of responsibility for health registers within the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the Norwegian Directorate of Health. The Directorate for eHealth has also become part of the Norwegian Directorate of Health. Additionally, Philip Skau points out that it is necessary to continually improve the conference:

— I believe it is important to further develop the concept, and one direction I wish to take it in is to make it even more relevant for patient and user organisations, he says.