Abstract
Millions of computerized records describing inpatient hospitalization activity are produced year after year in France.In spite of the availability of this massive amount of data, no global, iterative and well calibrated related study on health system efficiency has been possible.There are of course many specific studies partially or totally relying on these data, but their systematic use for assessing hospital activity, catchment areas or population health needs remains to be implented.Our work aims to contribute to create a methodological framework for analyzing these data through a three step approach :- Definition of data consolidation methods ;- Creation of adequate data repositories ;- Determination of analysis methods for two general topics : hospital activity characterization and study, with example applications.