Autoimmune disease (FOI)

Request

Is information on patients diagnosed with autoimmune conditions shared by General Practitioners with Public Health Jersey?

Please also provide information on:

• how the Government obtains health information on islanders

• whether auto-immune diseases are considered notifiable to Public Health

Response

Information on diagnoses made by GPs is recorded on the centralised system (EMIS). All data extracted from the GP clinical system is bound by strict information governance, consent and data sharing agreements.

Whilst the Government of Jersey may be able to interrogate the EMIS system for information, this information is not routinely collated outside of 12 conditions recorded under the Jersey Quality Improvement Framework (JQIF).

The search functionality for EMIS is complex, and because the data is input by numerous different, private practices it is difficult to be confident of data standards, therefore search results can be misleading. That is why, with the exception of the JQIF datasets, the Government does not routinely compile or report on EMIS data.

It should also be noted that the EMIS system is information held by the GPs rather than by the Government. Whilst the Government can review this data it is not held by them for the purposes of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Information about notifiable diseases can be found at the folowing link:

Notifiable Diseases (Jersey) Order 1988