Shield - Surveillance Scheme for Occupational Asthma

Shield is the Midland Thoracic Society's Surveillance Scheme of Occupational Asthma. The scheme, which was set up in January 1989, was established to meet three main objectives. 1) To study the general and specific incidence of occupational asthma within a defined geographic area, 2) To determine proposed mechanisms of asthma, and 3) to determine the employment state of workers at diagnosis. Chest physicians, the Medical Boarding Centre (respiratory disease), and members of the West Midlands Group of the Society of Occupational Medicine implemented the scheme, by reporting each new case using a questionnaire format. The questionnaire covered personal information on the patient, details of the diagnosis, information about their occupational history, and the outcome after diagnosis. The introduction of the data protection act in the UK required consent for personal data to be reported. This reduced the number of reports. In 2010 Shield was revised to allow online reporting. Only anonymous data is transmitted so no specific consent from the worker is required. This has reduced the data available. We no longer collect information on the proposed mechanism or the employment state following diagnosis. The agent thought to cause the occupational asthma remains, in addition the audit criteria from the BTS standards of care have been added.