The Compass Data Base

Abstract

COMPASS is a patient speci’jiic data base containing the longitudinal medical/pharmaceutical event histories of 5.25 million Medicaid recipients in the Llniled States. Sophisticated epidemiologic software is used to process and retrieve phormaceutical exposure and medical event data for conducting post-marketing drug surveillance studies. To date, several studies have been conducted using COMPASS which corraborate findings in more traditional settings. Although important limitations of the COMPASS data are known, the data bases advantages suggest a useful role in PMS studies.