CVD-COVID-UK / COVID-IMPACT

Join the consortium

Researchers interested in accessing and contributing to CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT are welcome to join.

Consortium Membership

Principles of Participation

Researcher Guidelines

Ways of Working document

Read the protocols

• All manuscripts/reports must be open access  
• Publications should include: “On behalf of the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium”  
• Correct acknowledgement of funders and data sources  

View full acknowledgement statements.  

For all projects which have used data from NHS England’s Secure Data Environment for England, please include all the following acknowledgements in your manuscript.

Ensuring that the correct acknowledgements are in your manuscript will make the BHF Data Science Centre internal review more efficient.

Acknowledging the Consortium in the author list

Add the following at the end of the author list: on behalf of the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium

Affiliation for the BHF Data Science Centre staff (only if a co-author)

British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, Health Data Research UK, London, UK

Wording on accessing data to use in the Methods section

We accessed anonymised, national, linked, electronic health records for England in NHS England’s (NHSE) Secure Data Environment (SDE) service for England made available via the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre’s CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium.

Reference to GitHub

This analysis was performed according to a pre-specified analysis plan published on GitHub, along with the phenotyping code lists, and data curation and analysis code (<URL for GitHub repository>).

Funding or acknowledgement statement (depending on what the journal requires)

The British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre (grant No SI/F/25/21170022, awarded to Health Data Research (HDR) UK) funded co-development (with NHS England) of the Secure Data Environment service for England, provision of anonymised, linked datasets, and data management and wrangling support, to coordinate national COVID-19 priority research via the BHF Data Science Centre’s CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT consortium. Consortium partner organisations funded the time of contributing data analysts, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and clinicians. This work used data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. We would also like to acknowledge all data providers who make health relevant data available for research.

Ethical approval

The North East – Newcastle and North Tyneside 2 research ethics committee provided ethical approval for the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT research programme (REC No 20/NE/0161) to access, within secure trusted research environments, unconsented, whole-population, anonymised data from electronic health records collected as part of patients’ routine healthcare.

Data availability

The data used in this study are available in NHS England’s Secure Data Environment (SDE) service for England, but as restrictions apply they are not publicly available (https://digital.nhs.uk/services/secure-data-environment-service). The CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT research programme, led by the BHF Data Science Centre (https://bhfdatasciencecentre.org/), received approval to access data in NHS England’s SDE service for England from the Advisory Group for Data (AGD) (https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/corporate-information-and-documents/advisory-group-for-data) – formerly the Independent Group Advising on the Release of Data (IGARD) – via an application made in the Data Access Request
Service (DARS) Online system (ref. DARS-NIC-381078-Y9C5K) (https://digital.nhs.uk/services/data-access-request-service-dars/dars-products-and-services). The CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Approvals & Oversight Board (https://bhfdatasciencecentre.org/research/data-access-and-linkage/population-data/cvd-covid-uk-covid-impact/) subsequently granted approval to this project (CCUXXX) to access the data within NHS England’s SDE service for England. The anonymised data used in this study were made available to accredited researchers only.

Those wishing to gain access to the data should follow the application process of the relevant national data custodian.

Acknowledging the Consortium in the author list

Add the following at the end of the author list: on behalf of the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium

Affiliation for the BHF Data Science Centre staff (only if a co-author)

British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, Health Data Research UK, London, UK

Wording on accessing data to use in the Methods section

We accessed anonymised, national, linked, electronic health records for England in NHS England’s (NHSE) Secure Data Environment (SDE) service for England, and for Wales in the SAIL Databank, made available via the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre’s CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium.

Reference to GitHub

This analysis was performed according to a pre-specified analysis plan published on GitHub, along with the phenotyping code lists, and data curation and analysis code (<URL for GitHub repository>).

Funding or acknowledgement statement (depending on what the journal requires)

All projects

The British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre (grant No SI/F/25/21170022, awarded to Health Data Research (HDR) UK) funded co-development (with NHS England) of the Secure Data Environment service for England, provision of anonymised, linked datasets, and data management and wrangling support, to coordinate national COVID-19 priority research via the BHF Data Science Centre’s CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT consortium. Consortium partner organisations funded the time of contributing data analysts, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and clinicians. This work used data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. We would also like to acknowledge all data providers who make health relevant data available for research.

Scottish National Safe Haven

The study made use of anonymised data held in the Scottish National Safe Haven. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the eDRIS Team (Public Health Scotland) for their involvement in obtaining approvals, provisioning and linking data and the use of the secure analytical platform within the National Safe Haven.

SAIL Databank

This study makes use of anonymised data held in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. This work uses data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. We would also like to acknowledge all data providers who make anonymised data available for research. We wish to acknowledge the collaborative partnership that enabled acquisition and access to the anonymised data, which led to this output. The collaboration was led by the Swansea University Health Data Research UK team under the direction of the Welsh Government Technical Advisory Cell (TAC) and includes the following groups and organisations: the SAIL Databank, Administrative Data Research (ADR) Wales, Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW), Public Health Wales, NHS Shared Services Partnership (NWSSP) and the Welsh Ambulance Service Trust (WAST). All research conducted has been completed under the permission and approval of the SAIL independent Information Governance Review Panel (IGRP) project number 0911.

Ethical approval

The North East – Newcastle and North Tyneside 2 research ethics committee provided ethical approval for the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT research programme (REC No 20/NE/0161) to access, within secure trusted research environments, unconsented, whole-population, anonymised data from electronic health records collected as part of patients’ routine healthcare.

Data availability

All projects

The data used in this study are available in NHS England’s Secure Data Environment (SDE) service for England, but as restrictions apply they are not publicly available (https://digital.nhs.uk/services/secure-data-environment-service). The CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT research programme, led by the BHF Data Science Centre (https://bhfdatasciencecentre.org/), received approval to access data in NHS England’s SDE service for England from the Advisory Group for Data (AGD) (https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/corporate-information-and-documents/advisory-group-for-data) – formerly the Independent Group Advising on the Release of Data (IGARD) – via an application made in the Data Access Request
Service (DARS) Online system (ref. DARS-NIC-381078-Y9C5K) (https://digital.nhs.uk/services/data-access-request-service-dars/dars-products-and-services). The CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Approvals & Oversight Board (https://bhfdatasciencecentre.org/research/data-access-and-linkage/population-data/cvd-covid-uk-covid-impact/) subsequently granted approval to this project (CCUXXX) to access the data within NHS England’s SDE service for England, the Scottish National Safe Haven and the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. The anonymised data used in this study were made available to accredited researchers only.

Those wishing to gain access to the data should follow the application process of the relevant national data custodian.

Scottish National Safe Haven

Data used in this study are available in the Scottish National Safe Haven (Project Number: 2021-0102), but as restrictions apply they are not publicly available. Access to data may be granted on application to, and subject to approval by, the Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care (PBPP (https://www.informationgovernance.scot.nhs.uk/pbpphsc/)). Applications are co-ordinated by eDRIS (electronic Data Research and Innovation Service (https://www.isdscotland.org/Products-and-services/Edris/)). The anonymised data used in this study was made available to accredited researchers only through the Public Health Scotland (PHS) eDRIS User Agreement (https://www.isdscotland.org/Products-and-services/Edris/_docs/eDRIS-User-Agreement-v16.pdf).

SAIL Databank

The data used in this study are available in the SAIL Databank at Swansea University, Swansea, UK, but as restrictions apply they are not publicly available. All proposals to use SAIL data are subject to review by an independent Information Governance Review Panel (IGRP). Before any data can be accessed, approval must be given by the IGRP. The IGRP gives careful consideration to each project to ensure proper and appropriate use of SAIL data. When access has been granted, it is gained through a privacy protecting safe haven and remote access system referred to as the SAIL Gateway. SAIL has established an application process to be followed by anyone who would like to access data via SAIL at https://saildatabank.com/data/apply-to-work-with-the-data/