The tool, which is available as open source software at www.qfracture.org, was developed using data from QResearch - the world's largest medical database for ethical research.

A not-for-profit partnership between the University of Nottingham and leading healthcare IT provider EMIS, QResearch collects anonymised patient data from EMIS GP practices across the UK in order to detect patterns of disease and other conditions.

The anonymised health records of more than two million men and women, registered at 357 GP practices in England and Wales, were analysed over a 15 year period in order to produce the QFractureScores algorithm.

Julia Hippisley-Cox, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Clinical Practice at the University of Nottingham, who is a co-director of QResearch and director of ClinRisk Ltd (which developed the open source software) said: "Osteoporotic fracture is a major cause of illness and a considerable burden to the health service.

"The new algorithm is able to identify patients who are at high risk of fracture who may benefit from early interventions. It is suitable for both clinical settings and for self assessment, making it an extremely valuable and easy-to-use tool."

Dr David Stables, co-founder of EMIS and a co-founder of QResearch, said: "This is a great example of how we can improve patient care and save the health service money by using the vast store of accurate, anonymous data contained within QResearch.

"Making the new algorithm available as open source software stands to widen its use, so that even more people can benefit."

Users of the new algorithm enter details including age, sex, weight, height and illnesses, in order to determine the risk of a fracture.

The QResearch database has already been used to produce the QRISK and QRISK2 formulas, which identify patients most at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, and the QDScore, an algorithm which can identify people at high risk of diabetes.

More than 600 EMIS practices make regular contributions to the QResearch database, representing around eight million patients.

Related news articles:

• EMIS' Profile

• QRESEARCH is a non-profit making venture run by the University of Nottingham in collaboration with EMIS. More than 600 EMIS practices, representing around eight million patients, regularly contribute to the database. The system anonymises and uploads practices' clinical data to the central database. Then, to protect patient confidentiality, the data are further anonymised and the figures are totalled to produce data that are suitable for research. (www.qresearch.org).
• EMIS is the UK's leading supplier of IT systems to GPs, providing the software that holds medical records for 39 million NHS patients nationwide. Around 56 per cent of GPs in the UK currently use EMIS software. www.emis-online.com
• ClinRisk Ltd produces software to help ensure the safe and reliable implementation of clinical risk scores into clinical practice and their wide availability.