Smoking is a leading preventable cause of chronic diseases, including circulatory disease, cancer, and chronic lung conditions, and worsens outcomes in acute illnesses. Despite public health efforts, 13-16% of the UK population still smoke, with higher rates among hospital admissions, especially in older adults who also experience poorer outcomes.

Influenza can cause severe complications, such as ICU admission and death, particularly in older adults and those with chronic respiratory conditions. Smoking further increases the risks of mortality and ICU admission, yet UK-specific data on seasonal influenza in this context remains limited.

This dataset includes 13,524 influenza-related hospital admissions from January 2018 to July 2024, focusing on individuals aged 65 and older. It contains demographics, serial physiology, clinical assessments, diagnostic codes (ICD-10 and SNOMED-CT), initial presentations, ventilation, ICU transfers, prescriptions, and outcomes. While a dataset for all ages is available, this subset emphasizes older adults, who are at greater risk of severe complications, particularly from smoking.

Geography: The West Midlands has a population of 6 million & includes a diverse ethnic & socio-economic mix. UHB is one of the largest NHS Trusts in England, providing direct acute services & specialist care across four hospital sites, with 2.2 million patient episodes per year, 2750 beds & > 120 ITU bed capacity. UHB runs a fully electronic healthcare record (PICS; Birmingham Systems), a shared primary & secondary care record (Your Care Connected) & a patient portal “My Health”.

Data set availability: Data access is available via the PIONEER Hub for projects which will benefit the public or patients. This can be by developing a new understanding of disease, by providing insights into how to improve care, or by developing new models, tools, treatments, or care processes. Data access can be provided to NHS, academic, commercial, policy and third sector organisations. Applications from SMEs are welcome. There is a single data access process, with public oversight provided by our public review committee, the Data Trust Committee. Contact pioneer@uhb.nhs.uk or visit www.pioneerdatahub.co.uk for more details.

Available supplementary data: Matched controls; ambulance and community data. Unstructured data (images). We can provide the dataset in OMOP and other common data models and can build synthetic data to meet bespoke requirements.

Available supplementary support: Analytics, model build, validation & refinement; A.I. support. Data partner support for ETL (extract, transform & load) processes. Bespoke and “off the shelf” Trusted Research Environment build and run. Consultancy with clinical, patient & end-user and purchaser access/ support. Support for regulatory requirements. Cohort discovery. Data-driven trials and “fast screen” services to assess population size.