In March of 2010, the Norwegian Parliament decided to establish a national register of cardio-vascular illnesses, the Cardio-Vascular Register. The purpose of the register is to increase knowledge about the incidence and treatment of cardio-vascular illness in the population. Such knowledge can provide a better basis for quality control and management of the health service, and for research into the causes of cardio-vascular illness.The Cardio-Vascular Register shall be established as a nation-wide person-identifying register that does not demand agreement pursuant to the Health Register Act and the common register model described in the report ”Gode helseregistre – helse” (English: “Good Health Registers – Health”).

Data

A basis register shall be established in which data about patients with cardio-vascular illness shall be collected from Norwegian patient register, the Cause-of-Death Register and the Population Register. Thereafter, this register will be connected to medical quality registers for cardio-vascular illness. Examples of such quality registers are:

Responsibility for Handling Data

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health is responsible for handling the data in the Cardio-Vascular Register. On July 8th, 2011, the Ministry of Health and Care Services provided a draft towards instructions on the collection and handling of health information in the national register of cardio-vascular illness for hearing with a deadline of October 7th, 2011.

Høring av utkast til forskrift om innsamling og behandling av helseopplysninger i nasjonalt register over hjerte- og karlidelser (Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet) (Hearing on the draft towards instructions on the collection and handling of health information in the national register of cardio-vascular illness (Ministry of Health and Care Services))

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health’s Bergen division shall establish and run the basis register, and cooperate with the medical quality registers. A project director and an IT-project director for the Cardio-Vascular Register were hired in February/March, 2011.