Legal framework and institutional responsibilities
CIPH is a central public health institute in the Republic of Croatia. CIPH deals with public health, health promotion and education, disease prevention, microbiology, environmental health, school medicine, mental health care and addiction prevention.
CIPH’s main tasks are to plan, promote and implement measures for the enhancement of population health and reduction of health problems. It prepares and implements prevention programmes and other health care measures aimed at promoting healthy lifestyle. CIPH carries out epidemiological surveillance and proposes, organizes and undertakes preventive and counter-epidemic measures. It also plays a crucial role in planning, supervision and evaluation of immunization. In addition, CIPH performs duties concerned with the analysis and evaluation of water safety and the impact of environmental factors on human health.
The Institute functions as a statistical authority which maintains national public health registries, supervises data storage and coordinates the work of other health registers. It coordinates the network of regional public health institutes, actively participates in the creation of health policy and public health regulations and engages in international co-operation for the purposes of improving public health and welfare.
The Croatian Institute of Public Health collects all relevant health statistics data for the Republic of Croatia. CIPH as a central public health institution in Croatia holds 16 national health registries and numerous databases. Those registries and databases are linkable with national citizens ID registry and can be merged with other medical databases. All databases are reachable with help of existing SQL integration, reporting and analytic tools. Data are collected through the National Public Health Information System of the Croatian Institute of Public Health which is shared with the Institute's collaborative institutions. The system enables management of public health information and processes for recording, receiving, using and archiving health information. The National Public Health Information System’s registers and health records are continuously expanded and added. The Croatian Institute of Public Health monitors the epidemiological analysis of morbidity and mortality of selected priorities in the field of chronic diseases, risk factors for certain chronic diseases of public health importance and participates in the development of proposals for programs of health care measures.
Health information strategy
CIPH collects information from hospitals and primary care providers,public and private. Till 2015 all registries were separate entities without possibility of connection. From 2015 on they are all part of one platform and information from one registry can be linked to all other registries. Further goals are to stop the need for hospital staff and primary care staff to have to fill in the registries but for CIPH to be able to “catch” the data on its own by connecting to hospital and primary care information systems. For primary care this was achieved in 2019.
