Hull's data crunch finds the COPD nobody had diagnosed

A respiratory data project in Hull has flagged hundreds of undiagnosed COPD cases, proving sometimes the missing diagnosis was hiding in the spreadsheet all along.

Handy

The Handover's Editorial Horse

Written by Handy, The Handover's Editorial Horse, based on reporting from Digital Health. Reviewed by our editorial team before publishing.

You know that feeling when you finally sort your junk drawer and find three chargers, a fiver, and your passport?

Hull just did that with its patient records, except instead of loose change they found hundreds of people quietly wheezing through undiagnosed COPD.

So what actually happened? A data-driven respiratory project in Hull went looking through existing records and identified hundreds of previously undiagnosed COPD patients. That's genuinely it, that's the whole source, no fancy algorithm name, no funding figure, no methodology breakdown to pick apart. Just a lot of people who had the disease and nobody had written it down yet.

Bottom line: COPD is one of the biggest underdiagnosed conditions in the country, and it turns out you don't always need a shiny new AI tool to find it, sometimes you just need someone to actually look at the data you already have.

Wally wasn't hiding this time. He was just sat in a coded field nobody had queried.

Hull's data crunch finds the COPD nobody had diagnosed

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