Pre-Hospital Emergency Department Data Linking Project (PHED Data) 0.1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Data linkage across ambulance services and acute trusts: assessing the potential for improving patient care.
IRAS ID
188336
Contact name
Sophie Clark
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The London Ambulance Service
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Currently, most callers to 999 ambulance services are transported to the hospital emergency department. However, ambulance services receive no further information about what happens to those patients once they leave the ambulance. We propose to investigate the opportunities and challenges of linking data collected by the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust (LAS) to data collected by emergency departments. Currently the two sets of data are collected separately during routine care and there are few examples where the data has been linked. We will approach six acute trusts across London to participate in sharing data with the LAS. Following the delivery of a pilot, we found that no patient identifying information (e.g. name or address) was needed to link the data. Once the data is collected and linked we will analyse it to identify any patterns in order to make recommendations to improve practice. We will also ask NHS staff working in various roles in emergency care to comment, in interviews and focus groups, on how these data could be used to improve patient care. We also aim to talk to staff involved in the data sharing process, in interviews and focus groups, so that we can provide recommendations for others trying to link data from different sources.
REC name
N/A
REC reference
N/A