ArticleBMJ open2017
Childhood respiratory illness presentation and service utilisation in primary care: a six-year cohort study in Wellington, New Zealand, using natural language processing (NLP) software.
Article in BMJ open, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Preventing otitis media and respiratory tract infections with the oral probiotic Streptococcus salivarius K12.European journal of pediatrics · 2026Trial
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- Detection of respiratory pathogens in infants using targeted next-generation sequencing versus conventional methods in Qingdao.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- A scoping review of ear and hearing health research in Aotearoa New Zealand: a focus on equity.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2025Review
- Rakeiora Genomics Platform: a pathfinder for genomic medicine research in Aotearoa New Zealand.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2025Article
- Utilization of Healthcare Services in Patients with Chronic Diseases under 18 Years Old: Differences and Contributing Factors.Journal of personalized medicine · 2024Article
- Diagnosis, Treatment, and Management of Otitis Media with Artificial Intelligence.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Is there equity of patient health outcomes across models of general practice in Aotearoa New Zealand? A national cross-sectional study.International journal for equity in health · 2023Article
- Health service utilization following symptomatic respiratory tract infections and influencing factors among urban and rural residents in Anhui, China.Primary health care research & development · 2019Article
- Natural language processing for disease phenotyping in UK primary care records for research: a pilot study in myocardial infarction and death.Journal of biomedical semantics · 2019Article
- Damp mouldy housing and early childhood hospital admissions for acute respiratory infection: a case control study.Thorax · 2019Article
- Apgar score and long-term respiratory morbidity of the offspring: a population-based cohort study with up to 18 years of follow-up.European journal of pediatrics · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo identify childhood respiratory tract-related illness presentation rates and service utilisation in primary care by interrogating free text and coded data from electronic medical records.
designRetrospective cohort study. Data interrogation used a natural language processing software inference algorithm.
setting36 primary care practices in New Zealand. Data analysed from January 2008 to December 2013.
participantsThe records from 77 582 children enrolled were reviewed over a 6-year period to estimate the presentation of childhood respiratory illness and service utilisation. This cohort represents 268 919 person-years of data and over 650 000 unique consultations.
main outcome measureChildhood respiratory illness presentation rate to primary care practice, with description of seasonal and yearly variation.
resultsRespiratory conditions constituted 46% of all child-general practitioner consultations with a stable year-on-year pattern of seasonal peaks. Upper respiratory tract infection was the most common respiratory category accounting for 21.0% of all childhood consultations, followed by otitis media (12.2%), wheeze-related illness (9.7%), throat infection (7.4%) and lower respiratory tract infection (4.4%). Almost 70% of children presented to their general practitioner with at least one respiratory condition in their first year of life; this reduced to approximately 25% for children aged 10-17.
conclusionThis is the first study to assess the primary care incidence and service utilisation of childhood respiratory illness in a large primary care cohort by interrogating electronic medical record free text. The study identified the very high primary care workload related to childhood respiratory illness, especially during the first 2 years of life. These data can enable more effective planning of health service delivery. The findings and methodology have relevance to many countries, and the use of primary care 'big data' in this way can be applied to other health conditions.
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