ABSTRACT
Diagnostic terms and codes should be established globally for proper documentation. It is essential to document the details of the acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, including dates, specific symptoms, whether the diagnosis was confirmed or suspected, prior health status, and the timing and severity of initial symptoms, including selected test results. Primary care clinicians are the frontline evaluators and care providers for patients with long COVID and their first point of medical contact. Primary care in the US is not set up well to meet the demands of long COVID. It soon became apparent to long-COVID patients and their providers that specialized long-COVID care centers would be an ideal approach for both treatment and research. Other European nations, including Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and Belgium are also involved in long-COVID research. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Background: Since its inception in March 2020, data from the OpenSAFELY-TPP electronic health record platform has been used for more than 20 studies relating to the global COVID-19 emergency. OpenSAFELY-TPP data is derived from practices in England using SystmOne software, and has been used for the majority of these studies. We set out to investigate the representativeness of OpenSAFELY-TPP data by comparing it to national population estimates. Methods: With the approval of NHS England, we describe the age, sex, Index of Multiple Deprivation and ethnicity of the OpenSAFELY-TPP population compared to national estimates from the Office for National Statistics. The five leading causes of death occurring between the 1st January 2020 and the 31st December 2020 were also compared to deaths registered in England during the same period. Results: Despite regional variations, TPP is largely representative of the general population of England in terms of IMD (all within 1.1 percentage points), age, sex (within 0.1 percentage points), ethnicity and causes of death. The proportion of the five leading causes of death is broadly similar to those reported by ONS (all within 1 percentage point). Conclusions: Data made available via OpenSAFELY-TPP is broadly representative of the English population. Users of OpenSAFELY must consider the issues of representativeness, generalisability and external validity associated with using TPP data for health research. Although the coverage of TPP practices varies regionally across England, TPP registered patients are generally representative of the English population as a whole in terms of key demographic characteristics.