The NHS England Secure Data Environment (SDE) provides approved researchers from trusted organisations with timely and secure access to de-identified cancer data to help understand the impact of COVID-19 on people affected by cancer.
SDEs are secure spaces where authorised researchers can access the data they need for approved projects. The de-identified data is analysed in a secure environment without being downloaded, to provide safe and secure data for analysis and research.
DATA-CAN’s partnership with NHS England allows approved researchers data access to improve our understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on the referral, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of patients with cancer, and those who may become unwell in the future. The ambition is to look at how this information can help develop new services, tests and treatments and ultimately save lives.
Two of DATA-CAN’s founding partners, the University of Leeds and Leeds NHS Teaching Hospitals Trust, are leading on this work.
The cancer SDE has been developed in two phases:
- Phase 1 – cancer data from the nationally collected NHS Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and COVID-19 testing is available to approved researchers.
- Phase 2 – in addition to HES data, national cancer datasets (Cancer Outcome and Services Data set, Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy datasets) is now available in the national Trusted Research Environment. Read the news story.
Visit the Health Data Research Innovation Gateway or email info@data-can.org.uk for further details of the NHS Trusted Research Environment and requesting access.
For further information on Trusted Research Environments, download this pdf created by Health Data Research UK (shown in the image below).
