Designing and Primary Assessment of the Iranian Injuries and Safety Epidemiological Information Database

Abstract

Introduction: Injuries are still considered as one of the public health problems in Iran and in the world, and their control and prevention impose a high burden on health system of many middle and lower income countries. One of the barriers of controlling and preventing injuries in low and middle income countries is inadequate or inaccurate information. Objectives: The Objective of this study was to design a national specialized database for injuries and safety texts, as well as designing a tool for classifying the information and finaly, preliminary assessment of the database. Methods: In designing the iranian injuries and safety information database (SafeLir), several programming languages including SQL, HTML, Java script and C # were used. The injuries and safety keywords were used and the related documents were retrieved. The relevant documents were categorized by a researcher-made tool whose validity and reliability were checked and uploaded to the Safelir database. The performance of this database was evaluated along with other medical information databases. Results: The findings from the evaluation of different parts of the database showed that the SafeLir database has ideal conditions for users and researchers to use in injuries and safety research. Currently, the beta (β) version of the SafeLir is available online, and a variety of documents including articles in scientific journals and congresses, books and thesis in the field of injuries can be retrieved from this database. Also, the performance evaluation of this database along with other medical databases showed that SafeLir's database performance was appropriate in retrieving injuries information, and even in the retrieve of national information, the performance of this database was better than other medical databases. Conclusion: The SafeLir includes all features expected by researchers and it can be used both in injury research and community safety promotion.