Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): key data sources

Primary care data

Statistics on primary care consultations are held in the  Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE). SPIRE was a national data service that superseded the Practice Team Initiative (PTI) and provided general practice information to both the general public and healthcare professionals. SPIRE was a bespoke service rather than a central dataset, with aggregate data only extracted for specific purposes selected by the SPIRE prioritisation group. SPIRE was decommissioned in 2023. Public Health Scotland (PHS) is working in partnership with National Services Scotland and the Scottish Government to deliver a new primary care data extraction tool.

Secondary care data

Statistics on hospital admissions for COPD are held in the Scottish Morbidity Record (SMR) databases. Data from SMR01 are presented in the section on secondary care data. The overview of key data sources section of the ScotPHO website provides a summary of the SMR01 data scheme.

Mortality data

Mortality data by underlying cause of death (including COPD) are published annually by the National Records of Scotland (NRS, formerly the General Register Office for Scotland). COPD mortality data are briefly reviewed in the mortality data part of this section. Detailed statistics for individual causes of death are published by NRS in the annual Vital Events Reference tables.