The Cardiovascular Disease in Norway – CVDNOR – project was a collaborative project between the University of Bergen and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The Cardiovascular Disease in Norway – CVDNOR – project finished 28th February 2020.
Hospital data were collected through the FS system (Research in Hospitals) for the research project «Cardiovascular disease in Norway 1994-2009 (CVDNOR, REK ID 14659)».
The FS system is an IT tool for streamlining hospital research. FS was developed to extract data from the patient administration systems at all somatic hospitals in Norway for the period 1994-2009. FS contains an overview of all hospital admissions due to cardiovascular disease and diabetes during this period, the data were extracted in 2010. Data from FS have been included in a major research project called CVDNOR (with REK no: 2009/861).
The CVDNOR project ended on 31 December 2018, extended to 28 February 2020.
The Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics, Region West, has granted an exemption from the duty of confidentiality to keep the FS data further in a research register, for cardiovascular-related research purposes, based on the Health Personnel Act § 29. The FS research register consists of 8,803,494 observations (1,321,653 persons) for the period. The research register is referred to as the ‘FS database’.
All research projects that are to use FS data must be pre-approved by REK.
The research register is currently kept at UiB (institution responsible for processing) in a solution for secure processing of sensitive personal data in research; SAFE: https://www.uib.no/safe.
During the last decades, cardiovascular mortality has decreased substantially in Norway as in other Scandinavian and western European countries. Nevertheless, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the main causes of death and a major contributor to chronic disease in Norway. Costs to society including medications, revascularization and disability pensions remain high.
To what extent the decline in mortality is caused by a declining number of new cases, or is due to improved survival, is not known. Norway has, until 2012, been the only Nordic country without a national CVD register. This has hampered studies of incidence and survival as well as aetiologic research nationwide.
The two overall objectives of the CVDNOR project were:
- to study trends in CVD occurrence (incident and recurrent events), short and long term prognosis (survival) and associated factors in the total Norwegian population,
- to provide endpoints for national and regional health surveys and clinical studies.