For many respiratory tract infections (RTIs), such as RSV and influenza, patients often present with similar symptoms and receive similar treatment, which generally results in good clinical outcomes. From a clinical perspective, it is therefore not always necessary to microbiologically test every patient.
Moreover, even when testing is performed and confirms a specific pathogen, that information is not always reflected in the diagnosis recorded in hospital data. In other words, patients may be assigned broader diagnosis codes such as bronchiolitis, pneumonia or lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) instead of pathogen-specific diagnoses such as RSV or hMPV.
This matters because healthcare data analysis often relies on ICD-10 diagnosis codes, the international standard used to record diagnoses in hospital data. ICD-10 includes both broad diagnostic categories and pathogen-specific codes for infections such as RSV and influenza. However, when laboratory-confirmed pathogens are not consistently reflected in diagnosis coding, analyses based solely on pathogen-specific ICD-10 codes may capture only a fraction of the true number of cases. As a result, the burden of specific respiratory pathogens can be substantially underestimated.
To build a more complete picture, diagnosis data needs to be combined with other sources of clinical information. When microbiology results, clinical data and long-term patient outcomes are linked and analysed together, they can be used to generate real-world evidence (RWE) on the true burden of respiratory tract infections. Such analyses can help identify vulnerable patient populations, improve understanding of the long-term consequences of infection, and evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination and immunisation strategies.
This is exactly the type of RWE that can be generated through the LOGEX RTI Observatory. By combining microbiology and clinical data from hospitals across Europe, the Observatory helps uncover the true burden of RTIs, which supports research, healthcare organisations and public health decision-making to improve patient care.
👉 Learn more about the LOGEX Healthcare Observatory on our website.