Call for patient safety project applicants
News
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is looking for practices to take part in its patient safety Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) project.
CPRD is used to inform the MHRA’s drug safety updates and approved public health research, representing patients and their conditions. Over 2,400 clinical improvements have come from CPRD’s work – the powerpoint below shows some of the highlights in recent years.
How does CPRD help my practice?
Practices who take part receive free, confidential and personalised prescribing safety reports. These reports help save time with annual medications reviews. CPRD practices have used them successfully towards their own revalidation and audit, CQC inspections under Domain 2, as well as QI projects. The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has also uploaded video of a GP uses these reports in its own practice.
These reports are designed to be supportive and to be used however a practice wishes. Reports in the series feature a variety of CVD issues, valproate prescribing in women of child bearing age, and psychotropic drugs in adults with learning disability or autism, and are repeated annually.
Data collected is used to directly influence clinical guidance, such as NICE and MHRA recommendations. Research such as drug/vaccine safety studies (e.g. MMR vaccination and Pertussis Vaccination) is made possible by access to real patient data, and contributing practices ensure their patient population is represented in clinical guidance and evidence based medicine. CPRD only collects clinical codes and not patient identifiable information (no names, addresses, NHS numbers, free text or postcodes). Data is only supplied to approved public health research projects.
CPRD also provides opportunities for practices to generate additional income and get involved with research studies and/or questionnaires. These are reported online, minimising paperwork, with questionnaires taking no more than 20 minutes each and earning the practice up to £85 per return. Clinical studies have also been offered to practices – in a recent Type-II diabetes study, the outcomes from the patient perspective were reported by them online and the clinical outcomes collected via the EHR.
For more information, please visit www.cprd.com/generalpractitioner
What’s involved?
Fill out the joining form, which takes only two minutes – www.cprd.com/joiningform. CPRD then sends you a poster for your waiting room, to keep you on the right side of GDPR. The practice then activates within your IT. Thereafter, there’s no further work involved, no software to install and no cost to the practice.
If you’d like to know more, email Stuart Fordyce, GP Engagement Manager Clinical Practice Research Datalink – Stuart.Fordyce@mhra.gov.uk
