Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Oct 29;10(10):e039996.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039996.

Cohort profile: CROSS-TRACKS: a population-based open cohort across healthcare sectors in Denmark

Anders Hammerich Riis  1   2 , Pia Kjær Kristensen  3   4 , Matilde Grøndahl Petersen  3 , Ninna Hinchely Ebdrup  3   5 , Simon Meyer Lauritsen  2   5 , Marianne Johansson Jørgensen  3
Affiliations

Cohort profile: CROSS-TRACKS: a population-based open cohort across healthcare sectors in Denmark

Anders Hammerich Riis et al. BMJ Open. .

Abstract

Purpose: This paper describes the open cohort CROSS-TRACKS, which comprises population-based data from primary care, secondary care and national registries to study patient pathways and transitions across sectors while adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics.

Participants: A total of 221 283 individuals resided in the four Danish municipalities that constituted the catchment area of Horsens Regional Hospital in 2012-2018. A total of 96% of the population used primary care, 35% received at least one transfer payment and 66% was in contact with a hospital at least once in the period. Additional clinical information is available for hospital contacts (eg, alcohol intake, smoking status, body mass index and blood pressure). A total of 23% (n=8191) of individuals aged ≥65 years had at least one potentially preventable hospital admission, and 73% (n=5941) of these individuals had more than one.

Findings to date: The cohort is currently used for research projects in epidemiology and artificial intelligence. These projects comprise a prediction model for potentially preventable hospital admissions, a clinical decision support system based on artificial intelligence, prevention of medication errors in the transition between sectors, health behaviour and sociodemographic characteristics of men and women prior to fertility treatment, and a recently published study applying machine learning methods for early detection of sepsis.

Future plans: The CROSS-TRACKS cohort will be expanded to comprise the entire Central Denmark Region consisting of 1.3 million residents. The cohort can provide new knowledge on how to best organise interventions across healthcare sectors and prevent potentially preventable hospital admissions. Such knowledge would benefit both the individual citizen and society as a whole.

Keywords: epidemiology; health informatics; quality in health care.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The five Danish regions and the 98 municipalities. The black circle indicates the four municipalities (Hedensted, Horsens, Odder and Skanderborg) included in the CROSS-TRACKS cohort, and the black dot indicates the location of Horsens Regional Hospital.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Data availability for the CROSS-TRACKS cohort in Denmark.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Flow chart of individuals included in the CROSS-TRACKS cohort in Denmark 2012–2018.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Beard JR, Officer AM, Cassels AK. The world report on ageing and health. Gerontologist 2016;56:S163–6. 10.1093/geront/gnw037 - DOI - PubMed
    1. United Nations Department of economic and social affairs. population dynamics. world population prospects 2019, 2019. Available: https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Probabilistic/Population/
    1. Christensen K, Doblhammer G, Rau R, et al. . Ageing populations: the challenges ahead. Lancet 2009;374:1196–208. 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61460-4 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sander M, Oxlund B, Jespersen A, et al. . The challenges of human population ageing. Age Ageing 2015;44:185–7. 10.1093/ageing/afu189 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Statistics Denmark. Statistics Bank; Available: https://www.statistikbanken.dk/statbank5a/default.asp?w=3440 [Accessed 1 May 2020].

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources