A pipeline for harmonising NHS Scotland laboratory data to enable national-level analyses.

Objective: Medical laboratory data together with prescribing and hospitalisation records are three of the most used electronic health records (EHRs) for data-driven health research. In Scotland, hospitalisation, prescribing and the death register data are available nationally whereas laboratory data is captured, stored and reported from local health board systems with significant heterogeneity. For researchers or other users of this regionally curated data, working on laboratory datasets across regional cohorts requires effort and time.

Patterns of emergency admission for IBD patients over the last 10 years in Lothian, Scotland: a retrospective prevalent cohort analysis.

Objective: It is unclear how the compounding prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has translated into the causes and rates of hospitalisation, particularly in an era of increased biologic prescribing. We aimed to analyse these trends in a population-based IBD cohort over the last 10 years.

Design: The Lothian IBD registry is a complete, validated, prevalent database of IBD patients in NHS Lothian, Scotland.