However, much of the data we currently have is patchy and collected by different systems that don’t talk to each other. Because some conditions are looked after mainly in primary care, they are not picked up just by looking at hospital records. This makes it hard to plan and target healthcare services to meet patient’s needs.

In this Story Map we focus on describing the prevalence and socio-demographic characteristic of people with osteoarthritis, inflammatory arthritis and rare autoimmune rheumatic disorders (RAIRD) in NHS Grampian and NHS Highland.

Here we are focusing on NHS Grampian and NHS Highland. The study population represents just under 50% of the population of Grampian and the Highlands, recruited from a broad range of practices covering rural and urban communities.