Severe asthma in Northern Ireland
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessment of prevalence of severe asthma in Northern Ireland – a record linkage study.
IRAS ID
352311
Contact name
Liam Heaney
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen's University Belfast
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 3 months, 1 days
Research summary
Asthma is common condition affecting around 134,000 patients (6.5% of the population) in Northern Ireland. Around 5% of patients with asthma do not respond effectively to treatments available in Primary Care. New biologic drugs are available from specialist asthma centres for a subgroup of these patients. However, there are concerns of significant inequality in asthma specialist care across Northern Ireland, with unacceptable variation in the numbers of people with asthma, frequency of asthma attacks, access to specialist asthma services and health outcomes across location, age, ethnic group and social class. With new safe and effective management options available for severe asthma it is vital that we better understand why this variation exists and put in place measures to reduce it.
Healthcare records from General Practice provide the most representative dataset for patients with asthma. We will identify every patient with asthma in Northern Ireland from their GP records and link records from prescription, secondary care (e.g., hospital admission and ED attendances) and specialist care to create a unique asthma dataset within Northern Ireland. We plan to use this dataset to understand how common severe asthma is, why some patients have worse outcomes, and why some patients have more difficulty accessing specialist asthma care.
Our study is supported by Health Data Research UK, a research consortium that aims to unite the UK's health and care data to enable discoveries that improve people's lives.
REC name
London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/PR/0360
Date of REC Opinion
17 Apr 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion