BMJ  2006;332:1226-1227 (27 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7552.1226

Editorial

Information and intelligence for healthy populations

Important, but maybe just too ambitious

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In his report on the resources required to provide high quality health services in Britain, Sir Derek Wanless concluded that "little comprehensive information is collected on the health status of the population,"¹ making it impossible to track, at local level, trends in major risk factors and in patterns of disease. England's Department of Health has now decided that something must be done to tackle this problem and is seeking views on a proposed new strategy for providing such information, Informing healthier choices: information and intelligence for healthy populations."²

The government should be congratulated for developing a vision in which real-time, high quality public health data will be delivered via "public health desktops" to a highly trained and integrated public health and local authority work force. It notes correctly that this will be essential for achieving the fully engaged scenario envisaged in Wanless's first report (about the long term trends . . . [Full text of this article]

(r.raine@ucl.ac.uk), Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London WC1E 6BT

Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London WC1E 6BT

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT

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