The dutch national alcohol and drugs database: progress in monitoring, monitoring in progress.

The Dutch Alcohol and Drug Information System (LADIS) has been operational since 1986 and covers 95% of all alcohol and drug treatment out-patient services in the Netherlands. From 1994 it has been operating as a population-based register in which contact episodes of individual clients can be linked over time with a unique code made anonymous by encryption methods. With the acceptance of the welfare law in 1998, the flow of various categories of data (diagnostic, demographic, treatment and evaluation) and the continuity of LADIS have been secured. Data capture, processing and quality control are highly automated. The information from LADIS concerns annual reports as well as numerous profiles of various groups of clients. The implementation of LADIS and the high degree of standardisation of the data collected have been strongly facilitated by the use of the underlying institutional application ADDICTIS. Within the LADIS framework, almost 95% of the (European) Treatment Demand Indicator Protocol data set on drugs can be collected.