Key DataLoch enhancements – May 2025
DataLoch’s latest major development sees the launch of the DataLoch Heart Disease Registry to substantially advance our support for cardiovascular research. This offering sits alongside our Respiratory, Cancer, and COVID registries in pre-defining critical data for research. Other data improvements include new hospital prescribing data, and a simplified approach to select laboratory-testing data. They are also delighted to present a refreshed website, which includes new Case Study and Publication sections that highlight just some of the benefits of their service, as well as celebrate their Programme Lead, Kathy Harrison, being recognised through a Digital Leader Award.
Launching the DataLoch Heart Disease Registry
The DataLoch Heart Disease Registry will accelerate cardiovascular research while preserving the confidentiality of the data.
Their newest registry focusses on a range of cardiovascular conditions, including acute and chronic coronary syndromes, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and valvular heart disease, as well as the role that diagnostic testing and treatment play in patient outcomes. The initial release includes data on more than 160,000 occasions where people visited Emergency Departments with suspected acute coronary syndromes.
As with their existing registries, a key benefit of the DataLoch Heart Disease Registry is a streamlined data-selection form that highlights the most relevant data.
DataLoch Heart Disease Registry: improving support for cardiovascular research
Inpatient hospital prescribing data added
To respond to researcher needs, prescription data from hospital stays (inpatient episodes) can now be linked to community pharmacy data. This improvement allows a more detailed picture of the medications prescribed before, during, and after a stay in hospital. Among other benefits, the guesswork to account for changes in community prescriptions before and after a hospital stay is greatly reduced.
Inpatient hospital prescriptions – enhancing the prescriptions overview
Standard variable sets – laboratory testing data
DataLoch’s standard variable sets pre-select the most useful variables for research within a dataset. They have now produced a standard variable set for laboratory testing data in our Metadata Catalogue. This change means that researchers only need to provide a single justification for all the data in this standard set; the selection of any additional variables has to be individually justified. Researchers unfamiliar with these data will particularly benefit, as they will be less likely to overlook key variables when making their selections.
Website refresh
Recently, DataLoch have sought feedback from researchers and members of the public to better understand what their website visitors require. They have therefore introduced a number of improvements, such as a new Our Impact section to highlight the benefits of the work we have enabled. A Quick Links section now points researchers to sections of greatest relevance.
Case study: collaborating with researchers on unique data requirements
Within the Homes, Heat and Healthy Kids Study – which is exploring connections between energy poverty and preschool respiratory infections – DataLoch have played a key role in fostering additional partnerships to expand the project. On the data side, they have enabled energy poverty-risk data from prepayment smart meters to be linked to healthcare data for the first time, and are now developing an environmental dataset that will become available to other researchers.
Tackling environmental impacts on childhood respiratory health
Case study: working with healthcare professionals to support data-informed practice
To enhance the care of frail patients, DataLoch have collaborated with NHS Lothian to develop an innovative data dashboard, now accessible to all GP practices across the region. In the initial pilot, specific training for GPs saw the number of patients coded as frail increase four-fold from 250 to 1,042 across nine participating practices. In combination with their dashboard, this baseline information has allowed GPs to proactively undertake polypharmacy reviews to ensure all medications taken by particular patients were still necessary and safe. NHS Lothian has since integrated the frailty dashboard into practice and developing it further in response to GP feedback.
Improving frailty identification and polypharmacy reviews
Digital Health and Care Awards 2025
Kathy Harrison, DataLoch’s Programme Lead, recently received the Digital Leader Award in recognition of her drive to secure positive change in the health data ecosystem for research and service improvement through collaborative partnerships.
Kathy Harrison recognised at the Digital Health and Care Awards
We hope these updates are valuable to you and if you would like any further information or wish to start new project-related discussions, please get in touch with them at dataloch@ed.ac.uk.