Background
MedicineInsight is the first, large-scale primary care dataset of longitudinal de-identified electronic health records (EHRs) in Australia. MedicineInsight was established by NPS MedicineWise in 2011 with funding provided by the Australian Government Department of Health.
Aim
To describe MedicineInsight, a rich source of health data for epidemiological research and informing policy makers.
Methods
The MedicineInsight program collates routinely collected de-identified EHRs data from clinical information systems of consenting general practices on a continuing basis. Data are not collected from patients who opt out. MedicineInsight operates under ethics approval and a robust data governance framework.
Results
MedicineInsight covers 3.6 million regular patients (with at least 3 visits in the last 2 years) from about 3,300 general practitioners and 650 general practices across Australia. Data include demographics, diagnoses, symptoms, prescriptions, immunisations, tests and health-related behaviours. Among regular patients, the majority are female (55%), aged ≥40 years (51%), reside in major cities (70%) and 2.7% are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. MedicineInsight has been used for post-marketing surveillance of medicines/vaccines and research into cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, pain, obesity and lung cancer.
Conclusion
Originally established to support quality improvement and post-market surveillance of medicines, MedicineInsight data are available to support a wide range of activities including observational and interventional research. While harnessing its value, users must also understand the complexities of using ‘big data’ for research purposes.