RESUMO
Background: Routinely collected electronic healthcare records (EHRs) document many details of a person's health, including demographics, preventive services, symptoms, tests, disease diagnoses and prescriptions. Although not collected for research purposes, these data provide a wealth of information which can be incorporated into epidemiological investigations, and records can be analysed to understand a range of important health questions. We aimed to understand the use of routinely collected health data in epidemiological studies relating to three of the most common chronic respiratory conditions, namely: asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and interstitial lung disease (ILD). We also characterised studies using EHR data to investigate respiratory diseases more generally, relative to cardiovascular disease and COVID-19, to understand trends in the use of these data. Methods: We conducted a search of the Scopus database, to identify original research articles (irrespective of date) which used data from one of the following most frequently used UK EHR databases: Clinical Practice Research Datalink (including General Practice Research Database (CPRD's predecessor)), The Health Improvement Network and QResearch, defined through the presence of keywords. These databases were selected as they had been previously included in the works of Vezyridis and Timmons. Findings: A total of 716 manuscripts were included in the analysis of the three chronic respiratory conditions. The majority investigated either asthma or COPD, whilst only 28 manuscripts investigated ILD. The number of publications has increased for respiratory conditions over the past 10 years (888% increase from 2000 to 2022) but not as much as for cardiovascular diseases (1105%). These data have been used to investigate comorbidities, off-target effects of medication, as well as assessing disease incidence and prevalence. Most papers published across all three domains were in journals with an impact factor less than 10.
When people go to healthcare services such as the GP or hospital, details of the encounter are recorded in electronic systems known as electronic healthcare records. Information which is recorded can include symptoms, diagnoses, tests performed and ordered and prescriptions. We looked to understand how these records were being used to conduct epidemiological research, specifically in three respiratory conditions (asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and interstitial lung diseases). We analysed information from 716 research papers which investigated one of these three conditions, we also looked more broadly at papers using electronic healthcare records for respiratory, cardiovascular and COVID-19 research. We found that research (published within articles) into these conditions has significantly increased in the past decade, however more research has been published with respect to cardiovascular diseases. We have shown that throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, electronic healthcare records were used extensively to conduct research into this new virus. Research is regularly conducted using electronic healthcare records, to understand diseases as well as treatments, more research is published in cardiovascular diseases than respiratory diseases.