The Health Research Board (HRB) is planning to develop online drug prevalence interactive tables next month to provide “a real-time, precise and succinct picture of the drug situation in Ireland”.

Over the past two years the National Documentation Centre on Drug Use (NDC), which launched its new website in 2009, has developed two dataset query systems — one for National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS) data and the other for National Drug-related Deaths Index (NDRDI) data, with the aim of creating a repository for Irish drugs and alcohol research.

NDTRS is an epidemiological database on treated drug and alcohol misuse and the NDRDI is a census of alcohol-related and drug-related deaths (such as those due to accidental or intentional overdose) and deaths among drug users (such as those due to hepatitis C and HIV).

The HRB is now planning to build on the success of these systems and create a new data query system, which will enable stakeholders to access and use drug and alcohol prevalence data....