Creating a Research-Ready Data Asset version of primary care data for Wales and investigating the impact of COVID-19 on utilisation of primary care services
1 Population Data Science, Swansea University Medical School, Faculty of Medicine, Health & Life Science, Swansea University
This repository contains scripts and resources developed for creating a Research-Ready Data Asset (RRDA) version of the Welsh Longitudinal General Practice (WLGP) data within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank.
The RRDA:
- Standardises curation of WLGP data to improve reproducibility and analytic readiness.
- Supports efficient large-scale queries by transforming event-list data into a structured, normalised format.
- Includes a comprehensive clinical code look-up to improve the mapping of events to known descriptions, allowing for more complete inclusion of recorded activity in analyses, especially in recent years when local and newer terminologies became more prevalent following the discontinuation of Read codes.
- Includes a four-layer classification framework to capture healthcare provider, access mode, interaction type, event details, enabling patient–practice interaction analysis.
Using this RRDA, we:
- Assessed population coverage (1990–2024), defined as the proportion of residents with shared primary care records, and stratified by demographic and geographic factors.
- Categorised GP events into key activity types (consultations, prescriptions, vaccinations, patient monitoring, etc.).
- Analysed longitudinal trends in GP activity before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abbasizanjani H, Bedston S, Akbari A. Creating a Research-Ready Data Asset version of primary care data for Wales and investigating the impact of COVID-19 on utilisation of primary care services. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.22.25336310
This work was supported by the ADR Wales programme of work. ADR Wales, part of the ADR UK investment, unites research expertise from Swansea University Medical School and WISERD (Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data) at Cardiff University with analysts from Welsh Government. ADR UK is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation. This research was supported by ESRC funding, including Administrative Data Research Wales (ES/W012227/1).
This study makes use of anonymised data held in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. We would like to acknowledge all the data providers who make anonymised data available for research.
All research has been completed under the permission and approval of the SAIL independent Information Governance Review Panel (IGRP) project number 0911. Further details of this process can be found on the SAIL Databank website (https://saildatabank.com/).
Shield:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
