Asthma: primary care data
Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE)
SPIRE is a service that allows small amounts of information from GP practice records to be used to help doctors’ surgeries, NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government to improve care and plan services, and to help researchers to learn more from patient information held at GP practices. For further information, please refer to the SPIRE website.
In June 2022 Public Health Scotland issued its first release of data using SPIRE. This publication includes some information related to Asthma. In 2021/22 an estimated 6.3% of the Scottish population registered with a GP had a diagnosis of asthma (data available from 65% of GP practices). More details on completeness can be found here. To explore Asthma prevalence at various geography levels, including individual GP practices, use the Disease Prevalence Data Visualisation tool.
Quality and Outcomes Framework data
The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) of the new General Medical Services contract, introduced in 2004, it included quality indicators for Asthma. Prevalence data by NHS Board and CHP were published in the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) pages in the PHS website but data collection was retired in 2015/16.
Prescribing data
Public Health Scotland’s Prescribing Programme, which publishes data on their new site, provides information on the quantity of bronchodilator and other drugs prescribed. As these drugs may also be prescribed for other conditions such as COPD, it is not possible to link prescriptions directly to asthma diagnoses. More recent data uses the community health index (CHI) number to allow person-based analyses.
Practice Team Information
Until 2012/13, the Practice Team Information (PTI) programme provided information on GP consultations for Asthma in Scotland. This information can be used to estimate the national prevalence of diabetes using information collected from a representative sample of GP practices. However, the PTI system was discontinued in September 2013 and was replaced by the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE). Historical information on Asthma consultations and prevalence estimates up to 2012/13 are available from the PTI pages of the PHS website.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
