Coronary heart disease remains the leading cause of death in Ireland accounting for over 7,000 deaths annually. As part of the national cardiovascular health strategy, the Southern Health Board (SHB), on behalf of the Department of Health and Children (DOHC), is facilitating the piloting of CHAIR in the Board's region

What is CHAIR?
CHAIR is a computer register that gathers information on hospital patients admitted with suspected or confirmed acute coronary syndromes in order to improve the delivery of health care and to improve patient outcomes on discharge from hospital. Acute coronary syndromes are heart attack (myocardial infarction) and unstable angina.

What will CHAIR achieve?
The CHAIR objectives are to:

• record, describe and analyse registered patient demographics (e.g. gender and age), diagnosis and treatment details and hospital outcomes;
• facilitate the development of strategies to improve the quality of ACS patient care; and
• contribute towards the development of a national plan for the in-patient and community management of patients with ACS.

The CHAIR pilot project is implementing a registry in the eight hospitals (SHB, voluntary and private), with acute coronary care facilities, in Cork and Kerry. The CHAIR pilot will run for a year, at which time it will be externally evaluated.

How does the CHAIR pilot project operate?
A CHAIR Registration Officer collects the data at each hospital. CHAIR data is essentially in two forms:

• personal data in the local database (within the hospital); and
• 'anonymised' data (no name and no address) in the central database (located in Dublin).

The personal data in the hospital database is information from the patient medical record and will essentially be used to better patient care in much the same way that other electronic information in a hospital is used. This data will only be available to the CHAIR Registration Officer and to certain hospital and medical staff. It has protection from public use by way of unique user Ids, passwords and physical access to the system.

The anonymised data will be used for planning and research purposes and the data subject cannot be recognised from this data. Unique identifiers (such as, patient's name and address) will be removed from data prior to transmission to the central CHAIR database. This will ensure the confidentiality of patients' information.

How will ACS patients be affected?
In each hospital a CHAIR Registration Officer will be recording personal and medical data on patients with a suspected or confirmed ACS on the CHAIR computer. This personal data is only available to the CHAIR Registration Officer and certain medical and hospital staff in that hospital.

The CHAIR Registration Officer may need to approach the patient to obtain certain information that may not be found on the patient medical record. This information, such as, smoking status and occupation, is essential for long-term research on causes and prevention of coronary heart disease.

CHAIR three month follow up study
In some cases, the CHAIR Registration Officer may approach the patient to seek the patient's consent to participate in a three month follow up study to see how the patient is getting along three months after hospital discharge. There will of course be no obligation for the patient to be involved in the CHAIR follow up study and patient care will not be affected in any way if the patient does not wish to be involved in this study.

Overall it is hoped that participation in the CHAIR follow up study will contribute towards the improved delivery of health care and improved patient outcomes in the near future.

Progress Reports
CHAIRProgressAug04.pdf (151.86 Kb)
CHAIR Pilot Progress Report -Jan 2005.pdf (151.39 Kb)
CHAIR Pilot Progress Report -July 2005

Who can I contact?
If you have any queries or concerns about the CHAIR pilot project you may talk to the CHAIR Registration Officer in the hospital or you may contact:

Brendan Cavanagh Project Manager,
Chair Pilot Project Strategy and Planning,
Southern Health Board

telephone: 021 492 3530
email: Brendan Cavanagh