Surveillance of the Incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) with Sparse Resources: A Simulation Study Using Data from a National Diabetes Registry, Denmark, 1995–2004

We propose two new methods to estimate secular trends in the incidence of a chronic disease from a series of prevalence studies and mortality data. One method is a direct inversion formula, the second method is a least squares estimation. Both methods are validated in a simulation study based on data from a diabetes register. The results of the validation show that the proposed methods may be useful in epidemiological settings with sparse resources, where running a register or a series of follow-up studies is difficult or impossible.