Population Health Monitoring: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

All phases of population health monitoring have been addressed in the previous chapters. Important prerequisites, such as a health information system and underlying conceptual approaches, have been discussed, and population health monitoring has been compared to related types of health assessments. This final chapter summarizes the main characteristics of population health monitoring and its current status as a field of expertise by means of an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). The chapter concludes with a set of recommendations for the research and development (R&D) agenda for population health monitoring: based on the findings of this book, which areas require the most and most urgent attention? Which main priorities need to be addressed in order to move forward in the field of population health monitoring?