Initiative overview
The HDRS was announced following the Sudlow Review ('Uniting the UK's Health Data: A Huge Opportunity for Society'), which identified the fragmented, slow and complex landscape for health data access as a critical barrier to research and innovation. At its core, the HDRS is built on a national network of Secure Data Environments (SDEs), expanding the existing NHS Research SDE Network. The HDRS will provide a 'single front door' through which researchers make standardised access requests, enabling them to access linked primary care, hospital, prescribing, mortality, genomic and diagnostic imaging data at national scale, while keeping data in secure environments and maintaining privacy through encryption, anonymisation and synthetic data techniques. The service has six stated goals: (1) providing secure access to linked national-scale health data; (2) leveraging major UK cohort studies and biobanks; (3) enabling access to diagnostic images, genomics and laboratory data for precision medicine; (4) supporting innovative data linkage; (5) streamlining governance; and (6) building public trust.
