Viral pneumonia is common, caused by a variety of pathogens including seasonal influenza and respiratory syncytial virus.  Secondary bacterial infections are common and can account for increased morbidity and mortality.  This may be due to viral-mediated immunosuppression of the host innate immune system.

​Antibiotics are usually given for pneumonia, most commonly penicillins and macrolides. There is some evidence that macrolides may improve outcomes from influenza however, this has not been explored in large studies.

​PIONEER and the NIHR Birmingham BRC Infections and Acute Care theme have curated a highly granular dataset of 2,692 viral pneumonia admissions, working with Respiratory specialists. The data includes demography, serial physiology, investigations, treatments (drug, dose, route), diagnostic codes (ICD-10 & SNOMED-CT), initial presentation, presenting symptoms, outcomes, and several severity scoring systems including National Early Warning Score (NEWS2), Clinical Frailty Score (CFS), Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) and AVPU score (Alert, Voice, Pain, Unresponsive). It also includes results from viral swabs and standard microbiological tests.

Geography: The West Midlands (WM) 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 (EHR) (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.