Latest news with #OpenSAFELY
Medscape
26-06-2025
- Health
- Medscape
COVID-19 Hospitalisation Tied to Higher Kidney Failure Risk
TOPLINE: Patients with COVID-19 who required hospitalisation had a more than sevenfold higher risk for kidney failure than individuals without the condition, with this elevated risk persisting beyond 180 days. No elevated risk was observed among non-hospitalised patients. METHODOLOGY: Researchers conducted a population-based cohort study using linked primary and secondary care data from England through the OpenSAFELY platform to assess the long-term risk for kidney failure following COVID-19. They included 3,544,310 patients (median age, 44 years; 53.2% women) with COVID-19 and 10,031,535 matched individuals without COVID-19; 6.9% of patients with COVID-19 were hospitalised. Participants without preexisting kidney failure (initiation of dialysis or kidney transplant or estimated glomerular filtration rate [eGFR] < 15 mL/min/1.73 m 2 ) and with at least 3 months of prior follow-up were included. ) and with at least 3 months of prior follow-up were included. The median follow-up duration was 446 days for patients with COVID-19 and 410 days for matched individuals. Follow-up started from 28 days after the diagnosis of COVID-19. The primary outcome was the time to kidney failure; secondary outcomes were a 50% reduction in the eGFR and all-cause death. TAKEAWAY: Patients hospitalised with COVID-19 had a more than sevenfold higher risk for kidney failure than matched control individuals (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 7.74; 95% CI, 7.00-8.56), with the risk persisting beyond 180 days of follow-up; the risks for kidney failure were particularly pronounced among those admitted to the ICU or with acute kidney injury during hospitalisation. COVID-19 requiring hospitalisation was also significantly associated with increased risks for a 50% reduction in the eGFR (aHR, 3.49; 95% CI, 3.25-3.75) and death (aHR, 4.93; 95% CI, 4.83-5.04). No increased risk for kidney failure was found among non-hospitalised patients (aHR, 0.85; 95% CI, 0.79-0.90). Black ethnic groups faced significantly higher risks for kidney failure than White or South Asian ethnic groups. IN PRACTICE: "Our results suggest that interventions to minimise the risk of severe COVID-19 should continue to be optimised among vulnerable groups, and that kidney function should be proactively monitored after discharge," the authors wrote. SOURCE: This study was led by Viyaasan Mahalingasivam, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, England. It was published online on June 18, 2025, in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe. LIMITATIONS: The removal of higher-risk individuals from the non-hospitalised group may have led to an underestimation of the risk for kidney outcomes in this group compared with non-infected comparators. Detecting a 50% reduction in the eGFR relied on regular blood tests, which were more common in patients with chronic health conditions and may have inflated observed risks due to more frequent monitoring. Additionally, some important covariates, such as occupation and type of vaccination, were not included in the analysis. DISCLOSURES: This study was funded through a Career Development Award from the National Institute for Health and Care Research. Some authors reported receiving research grants or funding, travel grants, awards, reimbursements, fellowships, honoraria, and consulting fees and having other ties with several pharmaceutical companies. This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'Transformative' investment for health data project
Millions of medical records held by GP surgeries are to be securely analysed for the effectiveness of psychological therapies used for anxiety and depression. The University of Oxford's OpenSAFELY project has tools that allow researchers to investigate medical files without seeing patients' data or it leaving the NHS. The Wellcome Trust has awarded the scheme £7m to analyse talking therapies, such as counselling and guided self-help, and £10m to create new techniques to access secure data securely. Project leader Prof Ben Goldacre said the investment "will be transformative". The project was established during the pandemic and analysed tens of millions of people's data, giving insights into who was most likely to die from Covid and which groups were missing out on vaccines. Building on the existing collaboration between the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science and NHS England, the project will analyse outcome data from patients who have used the talking therapies service. Outcome data is collected from 98% of people who have a course of treatment. OpenSAFELY said incorporating this data into its platform would help answer "many vital questions about mental health treatment", including how talking therapies affect long-term health outcomes and the best way to deliver services. The funding will enable researchers for the first time to analyse the anonymised mental health data in a highly secure setting. Prof Goldacre, who is also director of the Bennett Institute and who originally trained in psychiatry, said all the data "stays inside the computers" that GP practices themselves have chosen to store patient records. "But we've also done something really important and different about how researchers and analysts write their code to prepare and analyse the data. "They never need to interact directly with raw patient records at national scale. "Instead, the OpenSAFELY platform gives them randomly generated dummy data which ... is just good enough for them to write and to test their code is able to work. "They press a button inside the system and the code gets sent off into the machine that contains the real patient records, but automated and entirely at arm's length,... and then they get back their tables, their graph, their statistical results." He added that "radical steps" had also been taken to ensure it was "completely open and transparent". Prof Goldacre said the investment "will be transformative". "This has the potential to fundamentally change how we deliver mental health care to patients in the NHS. "In addition, the £10m data infrastructure investment will allow us to drive better use of data across the whole research community." Prof David Clark, one of the architects of NHS Talking Therapies programme and a clinical advisor to NHS England, said the research infrastructure came "at a crucial time for overstretched mental health services". You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. Private firm to take over talking therapy service 'I want others to access the therapy that helped me' Talking therapies set to move from NHS to private OpenSAFELY Wellcome
BBC News
20-02-2025
- Health
- BBC News
National health data scheme awarded 'transformative' £17m funding
Millions of medical records held by GP surgeries are to be securely analysed for the effectiveness of psychological therapies used for anxiety and depression. The University of Oxford's OpenSAFELY project has tools that allow researchers to investigate medical files without seeing patient's data or it leaving the NHS. The scheme has now been awarded £17m to analyse talking therapies, including counselling and guided leader Prof Ben Goldacre said the investment "will be transformative". The project was established during the pandemic and analysed tens of millions of people's data, giving insights into who was most likely to die from Covid and which groups were missing out on vaccines. Building on the existing collaboration between the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science and NHS England, the project will analyse outcome data from patients who have used the talking therapies data is collected from 98% of people who have a course of said incorporating this data into its platform would help answer "many vital questions about mental health treatment", including how talking therapies affect long-term health outcomes and the best way to deliver funding awards of £7m and £10m from the Wellcome Trust, which supports research into life, health and wellbeing, will enable researchers for the first time to analyse the anonymised data in a highly secure Goldacre, who is also director of the Bennett Institute and who originally trained in psychiatry, said all the data "stays inside the computers" that GP practices themselves have chosen to store patient records."But we've also done something really important and different about how researchers and analysts write their code to prepare and analyse the data. "They never need to interact directly with raw patient records at national scale. "Instead, the OpenSAFELY platform gives them randomly generated dummy data which ... is just good enough for them to write and to test their code is able to work."They press a button inside the system and the code gets sent off into the machine that contains the real patient records, but automated and entirely at arm's length,... and then they get back their tables, their graph, their statistical results."He added that "radical steps" had also been taken to ensure it was "completely open and transparent". Prof Goldacre said the investment "will be transformative". "This has the potential to fundamentally change how we deliver mental health care to patients in the NHS. "In addition, the £10m data infrastructure investment will allow us to drive better use of data across the whole research community."Prof David Clark, one of the architects of NHS Talking Therapies programme and a clinical advisor to NHS England, said the research infrastructure came "at a crucial time for overstretched mental health services". As part of the mental health project, OpenSAFELY and NHS England will also explore new mechanisms for data linkage, where datasets are minimised before moving between NHS England controlled data centres. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
