Queen's University Belfast

Academic Institute

John Busby

HDR UK

Yes

E084

Information from general practice electronic care records is currently unavailable within Northern Ireland for research purposes. Although a system to accomplish this, the General Practitioner Intelligence Platform (GPIP), has been constructed over the last five years it has prioritised work for direct patient care and has yet to be used for research due to various governance and resource limitations. This is a major limitation for future healthcare research within Northern Ireland, and particularly to the projects which will form part of HDRUK QQ2, a UK-wide programme of respiratory research. Consequently, we propose to build a cohort of patients with airway disease using GPIP data. This data would be linked through the Northern Ireland Honest Broker Service (HBS) to several other healthcare datasets including medication dispensing, emergency department contacts, hospital admissions and laboratory data to provide a unique linked dataset within Northern Ireland. Further data processing would be undertaken by a research fellow based in Queen’s University Belfast to build a respiratory cohort, and derive variables (e.g. exacerbations, treatment step) that could be used across all future projects. As far as possible, these definitions will be aligned with other UK nations and partners in England have already agreed to share code lists and algorithms to ensure consistency across datasets. This linked dataset would form a starting point for respiratory research in Northern Ireland within HDRUK QQ2, and would also provide a framework for future linkage with GP records for research projects in other disease areas within Northern Ireland.

Our project aims to facilitate future respiratory research within Northern Ireland. Firstly, within the HDRUK QQ2 programme which will investigate key issues such as socioeconomic and geographical disparities in healthcare and investigating variations in care processes and outcomes. Currently, this research is substantially impaired by an inability to accurately identify patients with airways disease. Our project will allow work in Northern Ireland to proceed alongside projects in England, Scotland and Wales. Secondly, our project will facilitate respiratory research by all research teams across Northern Ireland. We will make data on asthma / COPD diagnosis widely available and, by deriving key outcomes such as exacerbations, will enable teams to conduct research more efficiently.

03/03/2023

TRE