The European Society of Cardiology Atlas of Cardiology: rationale, objectives, and methods.

The need to develop better policies for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of cardiac care and for reducing the burden of cardiovascular disease, necessitates the availability of data on the economic, political, and organizational aspects of cardiac care. The European Society of Cardiology has this started collecting such data together with the National Cardiac Societies from across Europe. In particular, descriptive and quantitative data concerning the economy, demographics, socioeconomics, health status, health system, and health policies are gathered for every single member country of the European Society of Cardiology, alongside data concerning the number of cardiac care physicians, hospitals, beds, laboratories, interventions, and reimbursement figures. These data will be helpful in an effort to understand in more depth the dynamics of healthcare systems from a cardiology perspective and to identify trends, disparities, gaps, and best practice models, all of which will be useful for making recommendations to improve decision and policy making concerning the cardiac care field at national and cross national level.