The Infections in Oxfordshire Research Database (IORD) is an important part of our work. It includes routinely collected electronic data from hospital and GP records, covering about 1% of England.
The overall goal of IORD is to improve the management of infections and potentially infection-related episodes in UK hospitals.
It does this by bringing together increasingly rich types of data to investigate, for example,:
(a) trends in incidence of infections caused by different microbes in Oxfordshire, and infection-associated syndromes (like pneumonia or sepsis), within and outside the hospital: are new microbes starting to cause problems?
(b) predictors of infection with different microbes or infection-associated syndromes: what increases the risk of developing infections?
(c) severity of infection with different microbes or infection-associated syndromes, including adverse outcomes: are some infections becoming more or less serious? Are particular strains of a microbe becoming more dangerous (or “virulent”), and how might this happen?
What kinds of information does IORD have in it?
IORD includes information from two different sources;
1 – Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Clinical Systems Data Warehouse
This NHS database contains information on
- Admissions to hospital and what happened in them, like surgery or other hospital procedures, measurements of how they did like temperature and blood pressure, and antibiotics and other drugs they were given
- Attendance at outpatients and A&E
- Results from blood tests, other clinical samples and scans
- Which GP practice patients are registered at, and what region of the county they live in (not address or town)
- Visits to GP and prescriptions for antimicrobials or steroids (drugs that are relevant for infection)
- Sex, ethnicity and month and year of birth (not date)
2 – Research data from detailed studies (eg gene strain typing, diagnostics) done by the Antimicrobial Resistance and Modernising Microbiology Theme of the Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Oxford
Unlike NHS databases, the IORD database does not contain any patient names, addresses, NHS or hospital numbers or date of birth. Instead, records are identified by a specific, random, number. This means we know which records belong to different people, but not who they are.
Information about you does not have to be in the IORD database if you do not want this. If you have any questions or concerns about your data, or your relatives’ data, being used for this infection research, please email iord@ndm.ox.ac.uk or call the group’s Project Managers on 01865 851180 to discuss this. Or you can email the Oxford University Hospitals Information Governance team directly Information.Governance@ouh.nhs.uk.
IORD Privacy Notice
Accredited researchers can contact iord@ndm.ox.ac.uk to obtain a template for submitting a research proposal to the IORD Research Database Team. Access to any data will be subject to the proposal being approved by the Research Database Team and confidentiality and information governance agreements. A Data Sharing Agreement may be required with your employing institution, particularly for researchers without an NHS contract (full or honorary).
Understanding Patient Data
This work uses data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. Using patient data is vital to improve health and care for everyone. There is huge potential to make better use of information from people’s patient records, to understand more about disease, develop new treatments, monitor safety, and plan NHS services. Patient data should be kept safe and secure, to protect everyone’s privacy, and it’s important that there are safeguards to make sure that it is stored and used responsibly. Everyone should be able to find out about how patient data is used.