Project #203 : Migration-related coding in English primary care electronic health records

GP electronic health records (EHRs) contain valuable health data and are useful for research. OpenSAFELY is a secure system that allows analysis of the health records of nearly 58 million people in England. Migrants are defined here as individuals who were born outside of the UK. To study migrants’ health, researchers need to first determine if someone is a migrant in the data. Migration status (for example country of birth) is sometimes recorded when an individual registers with a GP or when they attend appointments. It might be recorded as clinical codes, like “Born in Algeria”. The purpose of this study is to understand how well migration status is recorded in English primary care data in order to inform the feasibility of conducting future research on migrants in OpenSAFELY.

Specifically, we will: Describe the number, proportion and demographic characteristics (age, sex, ethnicity, region and deprivation) of migrants captured in OpenSAFELY. Compare the numbers, proportions and demographic characteristics of migrants in OpenSAFELY with what we know of migrants from the 2011 and 2021 censuses, and from statistics published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on country of birth. Evaluate how the quality of migration recording has changed over time by conducting comparisons to yearly estimates of the England population by country of birth that are published by the ONS.