Medical History Database

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Introduction

The medical history database has existed in various forms since 1997. The initiative came from the county work board in Säter. The education centre in Dalarna started a text database with provincial doctors’ yearly reports as a basis. The initiative resulted from employment market politics and the objective was to provide training for long-term unemployed in computer skills so that they could return to the work force. The resulting database gives the research community the possibility to study a large number of documents without damaging the originals and without having to travel to the location of the originals. In 1999 a collaboration with ArkivData in Norrköping, who today oversee the transcription of the original documents to the computer database.
   The collaboration with Arkion (an unit within the National Archive) and Säter has now stopped. During the summar of 2002, the database was taken over by Umeå University. During 2004 and 2005, no development of the database occurred for financial reasons. In 2006, the responsibility for the database changed again. Now there are two parties involved: ArkivData in Norrköping and Linköping University Electronic Press (LiU E-Press). LiU E-Press is responsible for the operation of the database. The National Archive, The Regional Archive in Vadstena and Östergötland’s Municipal Archives.

Objective

The Projects Primary Objectives are:

• to make important archive material available to researchers and the general public through use of modern information technology;
• to reduce damage and expensive repairs to original historically important documents;
• to provide skills training for personnel at ArkivData in IT;
• to raise interest for history and medical history.

For Linköping University, further objectives are:

• to increase the visibility and to illustrate the advantages of using databases;
• to develop strategies for handling and analyzing large amounts of text;
• to develop database format;
• to initiate and conduct research projects using databases;
• to initiate and encourage students to use databases for the undergraduate projects and theses.

To the medical history database >>>