News and Perspectives

In the ever-evolving landscape of health care, data plays a pivotal role in transformative discoveries and enhancing patient outcomes. However, the journey to harness the full potential of health data is not without its challenges. Current processes – often ad-hoc and manual – hinder the seamless extraction, linkage, and safeguarding of complex data, limiting healthcare innovation.

The vision is clear: to empower ageing research by leveraging advanced methodologies such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract insights from free text and applying phenotype code lists for a nuanced understanding of individual conditions and multiple long-term conditions.

Since our last update, we have been working hard to improve data quality in several areas for the benefit of innovative research and NHS service management. In addition, new data are available, including GP visit data and patient journeys through hospitals. While for our Respiratory Registry, we have added Asthma and Wheeze cohorts.

Following the launch of the DataLoch Respiratory Registry earlier this year, we are delighted to announce that our registry has been updated to include Asthma, Wheeze, and Cystic Fibrosis data from South-East Scotland. This update represents a significant step forward for respiratory-related research by more easily enabling research involving any of these conditions.

At DataLoch, hosting data is only one part of what our service delivers. We also explore different ways in which we can improve the quality of the data we host, saving researchers time and effort, while working to preserve the confidentiality of those within the data.

A summary of the recent key improvements we have made to our data repository. The main additions include GP visit data, patient journeys through hospitals, cardiac surgeries and procedures, as well as greater clarity on diagnoses when people have been discharged from Emergency Departments.

The DataLoch Respiratory Registry is the first registry developed by the team. It is designed to improve support for respiratory researchers by offering a smoother data-selection experience, a streamlined application process, and straightforward access to related expertise.

Since the full launch of the DataLoch service in August 2022, support for researchers has expanded through further improving the data quality and views of data in the DataLoch repository. In addition, the development of a series of registries has commenced: the first will enhance support of respiratory research in the form of the DataLoch Respiratory Registry. Once complete, attention at DataLoch will turn to developing a new cardiology registry.