Surveillance of traumatic spinal cord injury in Australia: the identification of information needs

Monitoring the occurrence of disease through any surveillance program necessarily requires the expenditure of scarce resources. The type of information accessible through surveillance and how it may be obtained deserve careful consideration in order to justify these costs. Therefore before establishing a new system of surveillance it is advisable to ascertain the information needs of potential users and to determine the feasibility of developing a system to meet them. As part of the planning for a national traumatic spinal cord injury surveillance system in Australia these data were sought by conducting a survey of key informants in 1993. The planning and evaluation of health care services, a knowledge of spinal cord injury epidemiology and its sequelae, injury prevention, external demands for information, and facilitation of research, were identified as the most important needs for information. It has been shown that the prevalence of spinal cord injury in Australia is increasing. As this occurs the need for specialised health services will also rise. Therefore, to facilitate the rational planning of services, and to monitor the well-being of the Australian spinal cord injured population, accurate surveillance data are essential.