Learning Health System for Asthma
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing a national learning health system for asthma to reduce the risk of asthma attacks and the risk of asthma hospitalisations and deaths
IRAS ID
208905
Contact name
Colin Simpson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Edinburgh
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
The UK has the highest rates of asthma in the world as well as some of the poorest health outcomes from asthma. Investigations into asthma deaths in the UK have found that the way patients were managed in the time leading up to their death could be improved significantly and half of asthma deaths are potentially avoidable. For most people with asthma, symptoms can come and go and sometimes be erratic. To prevent these symptoms, there is a window of opportunity to intervene with the appropriate care. This window occurs between when someone experiences early symptoms like night cough or wheeze and when they experience a full-blown asthma attack.
Most people with asthma receive care primarily in their general practice. General practices have a history of using health information technology to care for their patients. The use of this technology over time has resulted in the creation of rich electronic healthcare data. Through this rich data there are opportunities to create a system whereby clinical management can be benchmarked and improvements highlighted.
This study forms an initial phase of work aimed at developing a learning health system (LHS), whereby data relating to asthma is extracted from patient electronic health records (EHRs) across Scotland, analysed to explore variations in clinical practice and then shared with general practices to highlight any improvements that can be made so that they can better support people with asthma.
If successful, we hope to progress to the main quality improvement phase involving an increased number of practices and then incrementally building this up to cover the whole of Scotland.REC name
South East Scotland REC 02
REC reference
16/SS/0130
Date of REC Opinion
12 Aug 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion