Recent data collection, linkage, and sharing advances are enabling us to change how we examine health systems. We can now study health systems from the perspective of the people they treat rather than the care setting that serves them. 

Working together with researchers from other countries and international organizations, CHeSS houses the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes, and Needs in Care (ICCONIC). The ICCONIC effort is a partnership of 18 collaborators from North America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific committed to advancing the development of methods and measures in comparative health systems research. Countries include England, the United States, Belgium, Canada (Ontario), China, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, Australia (New South Wales), New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Spain (Aragon), Korea, and Singapore. 

Leveraging rich data sources from across countries and working with national stakeholders who know systems and their data, the ICCONIC collaborative conducts comparative health systems research at the person level. By identifying the same person across countries and over time through linked national data, our research aims to determine how health systems constructed in different ways can identify, respond to, and meet people’s health needs. The ultimate objective of the collaboration is to increase the use of patient-level data from across care settings to conduct comparative research and provide policymakers with insights into how different care strategies and treatments might influence care quality, cost, and outcomes.