[Setting up a national information system for prevention].

Background: The recent law (D.lgs n. 81/2008) redesigned all the Italian regulations regarding safety and health at work. It redesigned rules that up to now were contained in laws that were introduce over a period of over nearly sixty years, with due review and extension.

Methods And Results: Article 8 of the law is dedicated specifically to a national information system for the prevention at the workplace (called SINP), created "with the aim of supplying useful data in order to guide, programme, to plan, and assess the effectiveness of actions taken for the prevention of injuries and occupational diseases... and to provide guidance in matters of inspection". It is important to emphasize that the course followed to define the SINP is due to the joint efforts that INAIL, ISPESL, the Regions and the independent Provinces started in 2002, by agreeing to a protocol, with the common aim of creating an integrated information system for prevention in the workplace.

Conclusions: At present data are available on a national scale and they are useful in order to acquire more detailed knowledge of the area in question (on enterprises, accidents, occupational diseases) and in order to define intervention priorities, to plan and program activities and verify the results.