About VISU

Introduction

The Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit (VISU), is a longstanding major project of the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC).

VISU maintains, analyses, reports on, disseminates and applies injury data to injury prevention, develops countermeasures, implements prevention strategies and monitors trends and outcomes of interventions.

VISU commenced in Victoria in 1988 with a paediatric collection based at the Royal Children’s Hospital and became an all age collection upon moving to MUARC in 1990.  The data integrates into the feed-back cycle of data, research, implementation and evaluation and, accordingly, is closely linked to many other aspects of injury prevention. 

As a fundamental resource for injury prevention, it provides tools for both characterising and monitoring injury.

In 2005 responsibility for funding VISAR shifted from VicHealth to the Department of Human Services.The DHS core grant does not include funding for an applied research function.  To reflect this change and to simplify our acronym we decided to change our name to Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit.  Apart from this change it is business as usual in 2006.

Objectives

• Deliver and maintain a Victorian injury surveillance program for injuries to all persons in Victoria with the following specific objectives:
  • To promptly identify the emergence of new hazards, or the existence of previously unrecognised hazards
  • To give special focus to injuries and hazards aligned to State and National identified priority areas for action
  • To monitor secular trends in indicator injury rates
  • Support to PCPs and local government supporting injury prevention activities
• To assist in the evaluation of injury prevention interventions
• Continued publication of Hazard (Three times per year publication of VISU - providing information about injuries and their prevention).

Functions

The functions of injury data include:

• descriptive epidemiology of injury:
  • frequency
  • population rates
  • age and gender distribution
  • geographic distribution
  • cause (mechanism) of injury
  • activity when injured (eg. work, sport, transport)
  • nature of injury and body part injured
  • cross tabulations of these variables
• provision of  injury severity measures (quantification of injury severity), particularly in prediction of outcome measures such as death and functional capacity
• provision of cost of injury studies
• identification of emerging or previously unrecognised hazards
• monitoring of trends and evaluation of interventions
• linkage between data sets to enhance the detail and quality of data
• case identification for research
• the basis for translation to prevention

VISU centralises and manages data from 38 Victorian public hospital emergency departments as part of the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD) injury surveillance collection of emergency department presentations in Victoria.  Currently the number of cases in the VEMD stands above 2,115,000. Two key data dissemination strategies undertaken by VISU are the quarterly production of Hazard and the information request service, which includes the media.

Hazard

Hazard remains a popular and important vehicle for the widespread and timely dissemination of injury prevention information on important and emerging injury issues. The diverse range of topics covered reflects a multi-strategy policy to link with new or potential regulation or standards, meet client demands, provide background to research projects, and provide updates on previous topics.  Recent topics considered include: Consumer produce related injury: playground equipment and trampolines; Unintentional asphhxia in children aged 0-14; Preventing home fall injuries: structural and design issues and solutions; Hospital treated work related injury in Victoria 1999-2002.

Information request service

VISAR serviced 247 information requests in the year 2005 utilising a number of injury databases available to MUARC: the Australian Bureau of Statistics - Death Unit Record File (ABS-DURF); Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED) and the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD).

The most frequently requested topics are: elderly fall injury, playground and play equipment injury, DIY home maintenance injury, home injury, dog bite, sports injury poisoning, nursery furniture and equipment injury, off-road vehicle injury (ATVs and motorcycles) and local community injury profiles (by Local Government Area).

• Who can access VISU injury data?
The VISU data and information request service is open to government and non-government organisations, the higher education and schools sector, industry and business and community members. We are not able to provide a direct service to primary and secondary school students.

• How do I make a request
Data and information requests can be made by telephone (9905 1805) or email: visu.enquire@general.monash.edu.au

• Any charges?
A standard format response is free-of-charge. Additional analysis may be purchased for a cost-recovery fee of $100 per hour, (GST exclusive).