Abstract
Multimorbidity (the presence of ≥ 2 long-term health conditions in an individual) is increasing as a consequence of population ageing and improved medical care. Multimorbidity is associated with a range of adverse health states and outcomes, including polypharmacy (the concurrent use of multiple medications), frailty, dependency, poor quality of life, and premature mortality. Developing a greater understanding of multimorbidity and how it may be treated has been identified as a major strategic priority. At present, limited data exist to describe longitudinal trends in the geospatial distribution of multimorbidity.
Multimorbidity and polypharmacy are overlapping concepts: the greater the number of conditions with which a person has been diagnosed, the more medications they are likely to be prescribed. As such, it stands to reason that prescribing patterns at the population level can tell us a great deal about the
multimorbidity state of the underlying population. Using open prescribing data, we explored the relationship between multimorbidity and the prescribing
patterns of common medications used in the treatment of long-term conditions (LTCs) in England. This work was conducted as part of a Data Study Group,
led by Dr Jonathan Batty (Leeds Institute of Data Analytics) and took place over the course of one week.
Citation information
Data Study Group Team. (2023). Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) Exploring Multimorbidity and Patterns of Long-term Conditions in England using Open Prescription and Primary Care Data. The Alan Turing Institute. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10033749
Additional information
Contributors
Jonathan Batty (Principal Investigator) is a Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellow at the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA), University of Leeds.
Philip Darke (Challenge Facilitator) is an actuary and PhD student at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cloud Computing for Big Data at Newcastle University.
Hattie Cant is a Health Data Science researcher and PhD student at the Centre for Health Informatics, University of Manchester.
Sida Chen is a postdoctoral researcher at the MRC Biostatistics Unit (precision medicine group), University of Cambridge.
Chuan Fu Yap is a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Manchester’s Centre for Genetics and Genomics
Beatrice Leyaro is a public health researcher and PhD student at University of the West of Scotland.
Rebekah-Louise Scanlan is a PhD student at Newcastle University, studying cellular senescence using systems biology techniques.
Ritika Singh is a PhD student at the School of Artificial Intelligence, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi