COVID-19 winter 2024 campaign: Cohort identification methodology

The NHS England Vaccination programme commissioned NHS England Vaccine Digital Services to flow patient identifiable data to their Data Processing Service and Foundry. 

This data is to be used within the COVID-19 winter 2024 campaign for:

• call and recall
• reporting
• monitoring purposes

The NHS England Vaccination programme commissioned NHS England Cohorting as a Service  (CaaS) to provide patient identifiable cohorts for the clinical at-risk groups as outlined in tables 3 and 4 of Chapter 14a of the Green Book. 

NHS England Vaccine Digital Services and NHS England Vaccination programme have indicated that the following patients are suitable for clinical assessment for a COVID-19 vaccine:

• patients within the clinically at-risk cohorts
• patients in the 65 years or older clinical risk group

A patient cohort has been created and made available in NHS England's Cohort Processing System (CPS) to enable the national call and recall process. The data will be available to Foundry for call and recall, monitoring and reporting purposes.

The following clinical at-risk groups within scope of this digital cohort development will receive invitations to present for a COVID-19 winter 2024 vaccination (as specified by NHS England).

Adults aged 16 years and over diagnosed with:

• chronic respiratory disease
• chronic heart disease and vascular disease
• chronic kidney disease
• chronic liver disease
• chronic neurological disease
• diabetes mellitus and other endocrine disorders
• immunosuppression
• asplenia or dysfunction of the spleen
• morbidly obese
• severe mental illness

Children 6 months to 15 years inclusive diagnosed with:

• chronic respiratory disease
• chronic heart conditions
• chronic conditions of the kidney, liver, or digestive system
• chronic neurological disease
• endocrine disorders
• immunosuppression
• asplenia or dysfunction of the spleen
• serious genetic abnormalities that affect a number of systems

Age based cohorting:

• people aged 65 years or over before 31 January 2024

This document outlines NHS England’s Cohorting as a Service's (CaaS) approach to deliver this cohort using established methodologies. It also highlights any divergence from the clinical criteria held within tables 3 and 4 of Chapter 14a of the Green Book and associated assumptions.

Data sets used are:

• GPES (General Practice Extraction service) v5: COVID-19 at risk patients data collection version 5
• Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database
• OPCS-4: Classification of Interventions and Procedures
• Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) dataset
• Radiotherapy Treatment Data Service (RTDS)
• Personal Demographics Service (PDS)

All those aged 6 months or older in the clinical risk groups shown in tables 3 and 4 of Chapter 14a of the Green Book.

All those aged 65 years and over.

The code set used within the GPES data set is:

• SNOMED CT: Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine

The code sets for Hospital Episodes are:

• International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision
• OPCS-4: Classification of Interventions and Procedures