Primary care digital landscape

Please note: from October 2024 the CRN/LCRNs will be referred to as Regional Research Delivery Networks (RRDNs)

The strategy focuses on where the most impact on patient and public opportunity and benefit from research can be made at any given point in time given the resources available, and is separated into four overarching themes with key objectives within them. Scope and vision has been carefully considered to ensure a balance between ambition and innovation, whilst also appreciating pressures within the NIHR CRN.

Following completion of the strategy, the Primary Care Programme Board was established to oversee the Programme, and ensure that the strategy is delivered steadily and cohesively through a manageable range of  projects.

Digital Primary Care

GP IT systems are the backbone of primary care technology. These systems help General Practitioners (GPs) and Primary Care Teams record millions of interactions with patients every week (primary care data). Primary care IT is provided by many different software providers but the majority of GPs in England work with two systems; EMIS Web and SystmOne. In order to do research in primary care each practice is required to use their IT system to search primary care data to identify and recruit patients into studies. This is a complex and time consuming process when this activity is done on a practice by practice basis and can increase regional variations research opportunities for patients. PRIDES helps study teams and GPs maximise these digital systems for research and reduce burden on Primary Care Teams. Find out more about Digital Primary Care. The PRIDES team works with the devolved nations in order to share HI & digital developments to support research across the UK.

PRIDES is part of the Primary Care Digital Conservations

Why are Health Informatics so important and how does PRIDES differs from Big Data?

Health Informatics support high quality coding in the electronic health record, which in turn improves the quality of information recorded in Big Data sets; it is concerned with data quality, embedding searchable codes and supporting patient identification. PRIDES HIs support Big Data but crucially they interface directly with the patient at the point of direct care enabling ‘real world’ research. This allows direct identification and invitation to take part (and in most circumstances no prior consent to contact is needed).

PRIDES and Big Data

PRIDES Health Informatics are designed to sit at the clinician/patient interface and can directly link to this relationship. They provide the direct opportunity to both opportunistically recruit by prompts and reminders, but also to select appropriate patients from the whole practice population. They allow enriching of the GP data set with research codes to improve the quality of Big Data and research data and metrics can be embedded. 

Templates can be created to enhance data capture into the record which can later be extracted for Big Data which can support follow up and improved data quality of Big Data.