News & Perspectives

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All News & Perspectives

Projects Delivered

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Survival extrapolation use case - an OMOP study using the SESCD cancer database Dr Mahéva Vallet Cancer

The use of hospital data has significantly expanded in the past years to better understand treatment patterns and patients’ characteristics. Comparing treatment and outcomes between hospitals is an important method of ensuring good standards of care.

Undertaking studies that compare between hospitals, particularly between countries, remains a significant challenge due to data privacy concerns. “Federated” analysis, where hospitals can work together to complete the same analysis and share aggregate results while data never leaves the hospitals’ servers, allows robust multi-centre data-analysis to be undertaken without any need for data sharing.

In an effort to facilitate the above process, the OHDSI network has developed the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) common data model (CDM). Once hospitals have formatted their data to this common, standardised CDM, an algorithm can be run by each hospital and share the report with other sites. This means than no individual patient data is leaving the hospitals, and the reports contain summaries only which means that the patients cannot be identified. The results are additionally checked by each sites’ disclosure guidelines before being shared.

This project is led from the UK by the National Institute for Care Excellence (NICE). It is looking at the example of how cancer survival differs between different European hospitals. Participation will allow us, NHS Lothian, as part of the DataLoch initiative to test our recently mapped breast cancer data and test our local processes needed to support federated analysis in a safe manner.

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Investigating the regularity of collection of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) in adults vs children Dr Holly Tibble Lung / Respiratory

Asthma affects more than 1 in 10 people in the UK. If untreated, asthma attacks can lead to unease and at worst death. In the UK alone, every 10 seconds, someone has an asthma attack. The main method of treating asthma is using regular preventer medication. This comes in the form of an inhaler, and patients are asked to take their inhaler daily to lessen the risk of an asthma attack. However, there are many reasons why patients don’t take their inhaler, which can vary between adults and children. This study will explore which groups of patients are not taking their inhaler regularly and whether this has changed over time. Using this information can improve the education we offer around medication use and reduce the number of asthma attacks.

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Publications

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Understanding hospital activity and outcomes for people with multimorbidity using electronic health records Konstantin Georgiev et al Ageing and later life

As the prevalence of multimorbidity grows, provision of effective healthcare is more challenging. Both multimorbidity and complexity in healthcare delivery may be associated with worse outcomes. We studied consecutive, unique emergency non-surgical hospitalisations for patients over 50 years old to three hospitals in Scotland, UK between 2016 and 2024 using linked primary care and hospital records to define multimorbidity (2 + long-term conditions), and timestamped hospital electronic health record (EHR) contacts with nursing and rehabilitation providers to describe intensity of ...
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Diagnostic and Prognostic Performance of High-Sensitivity Cardiac Troponin T vs I Luca Koechlin et al Heart / Cardiology

International practice guidelines consider high-sensitivity cardiac troponin (hs-cTn) T and I equivalent irrespective of the clinical indication. This assumption has recently been challenged by clinical and experimental studies suggesting possible differences between cTnT and cTnI, including a diurnal rhythm for cTnT but not cTnI, and a stronger association of hs-cTnT with renal function.
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