Hyperglycaemia and diabetes risk among 100,000 patients: Opportunities and challenges in using routine healthcare data

Centre for Population Health SciencesIn a Chief Scientist Office (CSO) funded project recently accepted for publication in PLOS Medicine we performed a novel linkage of multiple Scottish healthcare databases to address the question:- “What is the risk of type 2 diabetes according to admission glucose in people hospitalised for a medical or surgical emergency?”. We linked the following databases, for 4 Scottish Health Boards, Lothian, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Fife and Tayside:- • Scottish Care Information (SCI) Diabetes Collaboration (SCI-DC), the national diabetes register • SCI-store, a laboratory results database held within each Health Board in Scotland • Scottish Morbidity Record 01 (SMR01), the national hospitalisation database In over 100,000 patients admitted to hospital with a medical or surgical emergency we examined the associations between admission glucose and the subsequent 3-year risk of developing type 2 diabetes. As well as publishing these findings in a high impact general medical journal we have produced an online web calculator so clinicians can calculate the risk of type 2 diabetes for their patients based on each patient’s age, sex and admission glucose level