What is the Infections in Oxfordshire Research Database (IORD)?

The Infections in Oxfordshire Research Database (IORD) is an important part of the Modernising Medical Microbiology and Big Infection Diagnostics research theme. 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.

When people come to hospital or have blood tests taken at their GP, information is stored in large NHS databases. We call this information “electronic health records.”

IORD contains some of this information. But IORD is different from the NHS databases because it doesn’t have any personal information like patient names, addresses, or birthdates. Instead, the NHS combines people’s records and gives each person a random number before sending their information into IORD. This way, we can tell which records belong to different people, but we don’t know who those people are. It’s like having secret codes to keep things private.

Since 2009, IORD has been working hard to make our healthcare system become better at dealing with infections. It’s like being a medical detective – the researchers use IORD data to learn more about infections, just like detectives use clues to solve mysteries. You can find out more here.

If you have been a patient at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, then IORD includes some of your health data, but not your name, address, date of birth or NHS or hospital number. This includes coming for an appointment, scan or blood test, or if you have been in hospital there. If your GP sends your blood to be tested at the hospital, this information goes in the database too.

You can find out more details about IORD

• What data is in IORD?
• Who can use the data?
• How do they get the data?
• What do they do with the data?
• What kind of questions has IORD answered? Why is this important?
• What was it like before IORD?
• Opting out

IORD uses information that patients shared with the NHS when they were getting medical care. This information is really important as it helps us work out how to keep people healthy and create new treatments for infections. We also use this data to check that medical treatments for infections are safe and to plan how the NHS takes care of people.

We promise to keep this patient data safe and secret, just as we protect our personal stuff. We have rules in place to make sure we use this information the right way. Independent groups including patient and public representatives oversee how we run the database and what research is done. We also believe that everyone should know how we use patient data. It’s all about being open and responsible with this important information. If you have questions or want to know more details please email iord@ndm.ox.ac.uk or call 01865 851180.

Information about you does not have to be in IORD 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 01865 851180. Or you can email the Oxford University Hospitals Information Governance team directly Information.Governance@ouh.nhs.uk.

If you are interested in how health data is used in the UK, UseMyData is an independent movement of patients, relatives and carers focussed on the use of patient data to save lives and improve outcomes. They run regular Education Sessions for their members.