QResearch to predict patient cancer risk
- 20 September 2010
A score to predict the risk of patients developing common cancers is to be developed by the QResearch database.
Prof Julia Hippisley-Cox, professor clinical epidemiology and clinical practice in Nottingham University and a co-director of QResearch, told the EMIS National User Group annual conference that QCancer scores were being developed from the database which has already led to the creation of risk scores for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney disease and fracture risk.
More than 600 EMIS practices covering more than 12 million patients contribute to the QResearch database, a not-for-profit partnership between Nottingham University and healthcare IT supplier EMIS.
Prof Julia Hippisley-Cox said that as well as cancer researchers were hoping to develop risk scores for a range of other significant outcomes.
Earlier this year the National Institute for Health and Clinical Effectiveness changed its guidance to enable local health communities to choose between the QRISK 2 score and the traditional Framingham score for identifying people at high risk of cardiovascular disease.
Prof Hippisley-Cox told the EMIS NUG that the QSurveillance tracking database which includes information from 3,500 practices had also been “incredibly busy” during last year’s swine flu pandemic when it had supplied data to the Health Protection Agency to help provide national and local information on swine flu.
The QSurveillance database is used extensively by the HPA to provide primary care data including rates of infectious diseases and to manage the impact of public health emergencies such as floods or the Buncefield disaster. Prof Hippisley-Cox said it would also be used during the Pope’s visit to measure and health impact from the gathering of large numbers of people.
She said EMIS practices which contributed to the QResearch database would also soon be able to receive information in return from the database. Functionality due to be available to EMIS practices this autumn will enable contributing GP practices to compare their data with UK-wide data, their PCT data and practices of a similar size and demographic.
