Clinical Informatics and Health Outcomes Research Group (CIHORG)

Clinical Informatics and Health Outcomes Research Group

The Clinical Informatics and Health Outcomes Research Group (CIHORG) is the home of the Oxford-Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC), one of the world's oldest sentinel networks and is also involved in observational and interventional research.

CIHORG manages the Oxford-RCGP RSC network of practices, to enable the sharing of high quality data, collect virology, serology and other samples, and recruit practices into research projects.

The group is led by: Simon de Lusignan – Professor of Primary Care & Clinical Informatics, and RSC Director, who can be contacted via Zahn Gowar. Our chief statistician is Mark Joy.

CIHORG is organised into two theme groups:

Surveillance and infectious disease epidemiology, led by Uy Hoang, with project management provided by Karina O’Neill and Dominic Dunn (laboratory links).
Cardiometabolic research is lead by Jose Ordonez-Mena, with project management provided by Filipa Ferreira.

Oxford-RCGP Research & Surveillance Centre

As one of Europe's oldest general practice sentinel networks, The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC) has been the primary source for disease surveillance in England since 1957.

The University of Oxford has hosted the Oxford-RCGP Research and Surveillance Centre since 2019, and is commissioned by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to provide surveillance services, in partnership with RCGP, across general practices in England.

The Oxford-RCGP RSC network has grown significantly since 2020, from approximately 500 to over 2,000 nationally representative general practices in England. The network enables aggregated health related data to be used for regular surveillance reporting to UKHSA (for approximately 40 monitored diseases). The Oxford-RCGP RSC also undertakes research on a project-by-project basis which can include practices in England and the devolved nations.

The scale of the RSC and it capabilities have expanded considerably since 2019, and described in the RSC’s 2023-2024 protocol and recent cohort profile. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to demonstrate the importance of our network in recording high quality data, linking primary care data to virology and other data sources, and providing rapid data access, which would provide benefits for health service planning for future pandemics.

Learn more about the Oxford-RCGP RSC Network