Multimorbidity has become a significant societal problem. The number of people who have multiple, concurrent chronic diseases is increasing as a result of improved treatment options, longer life expectancy and more complex courses of disease.

A highly specialised healthcare system presents specific challenges for multimorbidity, because each disease is often subject to certain guidelines that do not always work well together, and no guidelines exist for multimorbidity as its own singular area. This often results in fragmented and complicated courses of treatment that are not optimal for the individual patient. 

Most people with multimorbidity are treated by general practice. Our goal is to generate evidence for treatment, prognosis and treatment courses for patients with multimorbidity.

Research areas

In the Multimorbidity research group we work with, among other things, register-based research and Det Danske Multisygdomsindeks (the Danish multimorbidity index), which we have developed ourselves and which classifies 39 physical and mental illnesses at population level in both the primary and secondary sectors.

Among other things, we conduct research into:

• Multimorbidity and treatment courses in general practice
• Potentially unsuitable medicine in general practice
• Re-admission to hospital and premature death in elderly people with pneumonia