Using primary care data for research purposes

Aim and intended outcome/educational objectives:

The aim of this workshop is to provide insight into the complexities of working with primary care for research purposes. By participating in the workshop, delegates will:

1. Understand the development, architecture and important differences between the main GP clinical information systems and the terminologies they use.

2. Understand the process of disease coding and identify some of the data quality issues.

3. Understand the process involved when defining data requirements to meet research questions and awareness of some of the inherent pitfalls and problems.

4. Recognise the concept, purpose and structure of a Plain English Definition.

5. Recognise the limitations and possibilities of general practice system architecture.

6. Understand how data entry techniques can support the research process.

7. Understand key data protection requirements. Format: Delegates will be provided with a series of brief presentations from leading UK clinical health informaticians on key topics relating to the use of primary care data for research studies.

Real-world scenarios relating to the use of primary care data for research purposes will be provided by the facilitators and delegates will work in small groups to address the questions posed, thus encouraging discussion and interaction.

There will be opportunities throughout the workshop for delegates to share their experiences of using primary care data and to ask questions.

Content:

Primary care electronic health records provide a rich source of data for undertaking high quality research studies. Benefits include quicker approaches to patient recruitment into studies and robust methods for the collection of outcome data. However, it must be remembered that the data have been captured for the purposes of primary care patient management and not for the purposes of undertaking research. This poses a number of challenges which primary care researchers need to be aware of.

This workshop will provide insight into the complexities of working with primary care data for research purposes through discussion of real-world examples. This will include an overview of primary care coding and terminologies, the impact that SNOMED CT has had on the primary care record, the processes involved when defining data requirements to meet research questions and the use of GP clinical systems for opportunistic intervention, either for patient recruitment to studies or to act as a trigger to change patient care.

The workshop will also raise awareness of the limitations of using primary care data for research purposes with a particular focus on issues pertaining to data quality, potential sources of bias and data extraction.

Intended audience:

This workshop is intended for anyone working in the field of primary care research or those who are new to the field. No prior knowledge of primary care data is necessary to participate in the workshop.