Swine flu in NHS Wales

The Challenge

In 2009 the National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) suddenly found themselves in the position of having to track the levels of infection of human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus due to the significant rise in the number of reported outbreaks worldwide.

Historically NPHS has had the help of a volunteer sample of ‘Sentinel’ practices that would supply infectious disease reports via a manual process every week. This coverage needed to be increased to monitor the reports on a daily basis of influenza from all the 500 general practices in Wales, covering a population of over 3,000,000 people.

The challenge that faced NPHS was how to scale the reporting process to receive daily reports from the majority of Welsh practices whilst not increasing their workload?

The Solution

NHS Wales, via the Primary Care Informatics Programme’s Data Quality Service, was already using software developed by Informatica Systems to analyse and report centrally on primary care data held at Welsh general practices.

The Data Quality Service (DQS) incorporates a GP software tool, Audit+, that automatically extracts and analyses data held at practices, and a central web-based tool, AuditWeb, that receives and presents the aggregate analyses across all of the practices.

Informatica Systems remotely enabled DQS to report on pandemic flu and immediately NPHS was able to track the incidence and spread of swine flu and other potential pandemics by collating daily reports from more than 75% of the GP practices across Wales each day

The Result

Simon Scourfield, deputy director for the Primary Care Informatics Programme, said: “The Data Quality Service has been a resounding success.

“After providing timely and accurate data for last year’s influenza vaccination programme, we were well positioned to cope with the demand for similar data to help tackle the current swine flu outbreak.”

The Data Quality Service will also enable the NPHS to track the progress of mass vaccination programmes and will be used to highlight areas for which vaccination is a priority.