Transforming Health Research with Secure Data Access in the East of England
Led by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust in partnership with Health Innovation East and Cambridge University Health Partners, the East of England Secure Data Environment (SDE) leverages routinely collected NHS patient data to accelerate research and innovation that benefits the public. The SDE provides a safe space for researchers to access and analyse health data in a secure platform, avoiding the need for data to be shared.
Mobilising data for health benefits
Just as important as new buildings in modernising healthcare, creating an infrastructure for data access and analysis allows the NHS to securely mobilise data to enable researchers to speed up the search for new treatments, while maintaining patient privacy.
Health and care organisations across the East of England manage a vast amount of patient data, covering a population of 7 million people. However, much of this data is fragmented, difficult to access, or hard to link, creating barriers to vital health research and discoveries.
Large-scale, diverse datasets can reveal patterns of health and disease, which can drive life-changing research discoveries. This is especially important for research into rare diseases, where recruiting sufficient patients is challenging, and for complex conditions like heart failure.
The SDE provides the solution: a secure, controlled environment where approved researchers can access de-personalised NHS patient records without needing to move or copy the data. All data remains under NHS control, ensuring the highest levels of security and privacy.
Addressing heart failure as a top priority
Cardiovascular disease is the most significant health burden in the country, and yet can be addressed through factors including prevention, early detection, optimising treatment and patient care and advancing research.
In the East of England one fifth of patients with heart failure are re-admitted to hospital within a month after being discharged. One of the research projects supported by the SDE is using and analysing de-personalised data from patients with heart failure at participating NHS trusts across the region and the East of England ambulance service. Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals are building a tool to predict which patients with heart failure are most at risk of readmission following discharge. This will enable doctors to tailor the right care to the right patients.
Secure access to NHS data for research
To learn more about datasets that are available for research studies, researchers can contact the SDE team directly or browse information on the Health Data Research Gateway. Researchers will soon be able to use cohort identification tools and work with local experts to build bespoke datasets.
Other services available from the East of England Secure Data Environment
The SDE provides additional data services to researchers, including use of the secure platform infrastructure for researchers’ own data analysis, data science tooling, computational support and data consultancy services.
Learn more and get involved
- Calling researchers. If you have a project that requires use of NHS data, let us know. We are especially keen to support studies with a clear patient and public benefit.
- Members of the public. Share your thoughts on NHS data use in research through our 10 minutesurvey or apply to join the SDE’s Data Access Committee to help shape how NHS data is used for research
Contact the SDE team at cuh.eoe.sde@nhs.net
Read more about the SDE on our website