Researchers from the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research and Swansea University Medical School have cautioned that there is a need for improved quality in recording asthma diagnosis and also events. According to them, there is a huge potential that is locked within EHR (electronic health records) in order to promote improvements in the asthma care and catalyze research.
Researchers call for improvements in asthma care through EHR
Researchers have emphasized that improved and consistent reporting of studies is indeed needed so as to ensure that important questions about asthma should be answered. Accounting for almost 100,000 hospital admissions and even around £1 billion annual healthcare expenditure; nearly 10% of the UK population has recorded diagnosis of asthma.
Wide variations and inconsistencies in methods applied
In a study that has been published in the European Respiratory Journal, Al Sallakh et al. examined the international approaches that are used to define asthma severity, asthma, control and exacerbation from EHR in the recent academic literature.
In this study, the researchers have found wide variations and inconsistencies across studies and have found little evidence so as to support the validity of the algorithms used.
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
Dr. Gwyneth Davies, Respiratory Consultant at Swansea University Medical School said, ‘If we have to learn about asthma, it is absolutely crucial that we need to have better and more consistent reporting of data’.
What Professor Andrew Morris & Dr. Samantha Walker said:
Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Usher Institute said, ‘The UK has an opportunity to provide an international leadership role to develop and agree on standards for health and biomedical data science. This research highlights the need for agreeing on standards for both methodologies and reporting as we accelerate the pace and scale of data science in the UK’.
Dr. Samantha Walker said, ‘As electronic health records become more widely used, it is vital to ensure all the information is defined and collected in a consistent manner so that we can have confidence in it. Until this happens we are missing opportunities to understand asthma fully and make improvements in asthma care’.
Image Source: Image
Date: June 20, 2017