HDR UK Multimorbidity Implementation Platform

The UK Academy of Medical Sciences defines multimorbidity as the co-existence of two or more long-term conditions. Multimorbidity is common in the UK and the health service is having to treat greater numbers of patients with more than one disease or condition. We aim to find out more about what diseases and conditions are found together, how they develop as people age and also which cause the most problems for people and the health service.

We have worked with researchers across all four nations in the UK to utilise 6 different datasets which hold anonymised information on over 10 million people to explore multimorbidity in the UK at a scale never done before. We have developed a framework which holds 20 years of longitudinal data for all patients aged 25 or over on 1st January 2000, including linked hospital (not all sites), primary care (not all sites), prescribing, disease registry and demographic records.

We have performed a systematic review to explore variations in the measurement of multimorbidity and also worked with clinicians, researchers and the public to define how best they think we should measure multimorbidity and which are the important conditions to examine. We have also worked with a UK wide patient and public panel to get their input to the project but also to explore how best to involve patients and the public in health data science research.

We have supported HDR UK strategy by developing the ability to use data at scale across UK for research with a distributed team of health data scientists and would plan for this work to inform other HDR UK activities. The consolidated datasets are listed below: • CALIBER Multimorbidity Cohort • Discovery Multimorbidity Cohort • Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland Multimorbidity Cohort • Northern Ireland Multimorbidity Cohort • Scottish Multimorbidity Cohort • Wales Multimorbidity Cohort

The work has been developed by researchers at the following institutions: MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge Queen Mary University of London Queens University Belfast Swansea University University College London University of Aberdeen University of Birmingham University of Edinburgh University of Leicester University of Oxford University of St Andrews University of Warwick

This collection will feature datasets, projects and outputs from the HDR UK Multimorbidity Implementation Platform.