Evaluation of Enhanced Paediatric Respiratory Infection Surveillance

Respiratory infections are the most common illnesses seen by GPs, especially in children. Previous research has focused on respiratory infections in the GP consultation, but not so much is known about how they develop out in the community.

The study was set up to see if we could collect information on the symptoms and microbiology (viruses and bacteria) of these circulating infections, and whether we could in future create an online resource for GPs and parents based on real-time infection information.

We are pleased to have recruited 485 children from 431 families in Bristol, who provided information about 346 respiratory infections they developed between February and the end of July 2016. This exceeded our original targets (of 300 infections) and is a great success! Thank you kindly to all the families that supported our study.

Please see our study outputs page (which we will keep updated) to read about our findings.

The research is run by the University of Bristol working with NHS GP surgeries in the Bristol area. Our research team is a part of the Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC), based in the School of Social and Community Medicine. The study is funded and supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Evaluation of Interventions. The HPRU is a partnership between universities across England and Public Health England (PHE) which supports high quality research to protect our health.