Deriving a Standardised Recommended Respiratory Disease Codelist Repository for Future Research

Area of Science:

• Respiratory medicine
• Health informatics
• Clinical epidemiology

Background:

• Electronic health record (EHR) databases offer valuable longitudinal data for respiratory condition research.
• Inconsistent clinical coding within EHRs presents challenges for research accuracy.
• Standardized codelists are crucial for reliable EHR-based respiratory research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically identify and compile existing respiratory disease codelists from literature and repositories.
• To develop recommended codelists for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and respiratory tract infections.
• To enhance consistency and transparency in respiratory disease research using EHR data.

Main Methods:

• Conducted systematic literature searches of Medline and UK code repositories for relevant codelists.
• Applied a reproducible methodology for codelist creation, incorporating expert opinion and existing literature.
• Searched for codelists for asthma (from Jan 2018) and COPD/respiratory infections (from Jan 2020).

Main Results:

• Identified a limited number of published articles containing codelists (3% for asthma, 22% for COPD, 5% for respiratory infections).
• Retrieved a substantial number of codelists from repositories (12 asthma, 23 COPD, 64 respiratory infection).
• Compiled comprehensive respiratory disease codelists and derived recommended lists for research use.

Conclusions:

• Significant variation exists in codelists used across studies, even for similar research questions.
• While progress has been made, enhanced consistency and transparency in EHR data use for respiratory research are necessary.
• The developed recommended codelists aim to support researchers in selecting appropriate and up-to-date tools for their specific research needs.