The UK Clinical Cohorts (UK CliC) Trusted Research Environment (TRE) aims to provide clinical cohort owners with a TRE where they can collect, deposit, link and share their cohort data. The BHF Data Science Centre will coordinate the linkage process, including submission of applications to Data Custodians, and provide expert Data Scientist support in curating any newly linked datasets. Cohort data held in the UK CliC TRE will be made available to third-party researchers through an application process.
To apply for your cohort to be included within the UK CliC TRE, please fill in our enquiry form:
The modular nature of the UK CliC TRE allows you to use the elements of the platform that are of most use to you.
There are several benefits to onboarding your clinical cohort data to the UK CliC TRE, including:
Administrative/management and governance support
The platform will provide research management, governance and data scientist input to your project. This includes providing oversight of the process for applying for access (for example through the NHS England Data Access Request Service process).
Data collection module
The platform will have a dedicated area, called the Cohort Bridge, to collect and manage data prior to it being linked to health records within the UK CliC TRE.
Reduced costs
Your cohort will be included in an overarching Data Sharing Agreement with data custodians, resulting in a more timely and cost efficient mechanism for linkage when compared to individual cohorts applying for data linkage.
Support during your research project
Our Health Data Science team has extensive experience of providing support to research projects seeking to analyse large-scale routinely collected linked electronic health record (EHR) data, across the national secure data or trusted research environments for England, Scotland, and Wales.
The team aims to accelerate the researcher journey within the UK CliC TRE, reducing the amount of time spent on data curation, maximising the use of data, promoting best practice, and improving the efficiency of the TRE.
The support offered to (prospective) research teams working within the UK CliC TRE will include:
Project proposal/protocol scoping and feasibility advice/assessments
In partnership with the cohort data management team and the SAIL analytical team, the Health Data Science team will provide support in establishing the feasibility of the proposed research questions and the likelihood of the data being able to facilitate the planned analyses. The team will advise on the utility of the linked EHR datasets and will build up knowledge of the cohort data over time drawing on expertise when needed from the cohort data management team for any data-related queries and cohort principal investigators and associated teams for any clinical-related queries.
Data curation and resource generation
The Health Data Science team will generate data curation tools and resources, to help researchers navigate and effectively utilise the nationally collated linked EHR data available within the UK CliC TRE, including:
- Tutorials for navigating and working within the environment.
- Data summary and insight notebooks to help with understanding the data.
- Common code repositories and curated tables to help with making best and efficient use of the data.
- Reproducible and reusable data curation pipelines that can be readily adapted to transform collections of raw provisioned data into an analysis-ready datasets.
- The team will share learnings and code from across the UK CliC TRE to ensure that the knowledge gathered and efficiencies realised for one cohort can be reapplied to other cohort.
Project support
The team can provide different levels of tailored support to researchers, from signposting to existing and relevant data curation resources and code to potentially providing more hands-on support with developing data curation pipelines. The Health Data Scientists can guide research teams with their data curation tasks, assist with exploratory data analyses and data quality checks, and review data curation code and pipelines to promote best practice across the UK CliC TRE.
Data analysis
Researchers will conduct their own data analysis. The team will primarily provide support with data curation and the generation of the analysis-ready dataset(s), but may be able to help with particular data analysis queries and signpost to existing and relevant data analysis scripts. As per the UK CliC TRE Welcome Pack, researchers will be expected to share learnings and code from their data analyses to avoid duplication of effort for other researchers.
Data access/disclosure control for external researchers
The SAIL Information Governance Review Panel (IGRP) process is well established and will provide a mechanism to share data with other researchers. This means that important data is used beyond the purpose it was originally collected for.
Whole Population Data
We aim to improve access to and use of high-quality, linked health datasets covering entire populations across the UK.
Defining Disease
To drive large-scale, data-driven research, we’re working to develop and share reusable definitions of cardiovascular diseases in computable forms. These definitions enable researchers to interpret and use health data, leading to more accurate and reproducible studies.
Data Enabled Clinical Trials
By integrating routinely collected NHS health data into clinical trials, we’re helping researchers recruit participants more effectively, reduce administrative burdens, and generate real-world evidence that can lead to quicker, more impactful advances in cardiovascular care.
Imaging
Cardiovascular imaging research has the potential to transform disease diagnosis, risk assessment, and treatment. This area aims to improve access to imaging data linked to health-relevant datasets across the UK, enabling innovative research and improving patient outcomes.
Smartphones and Wearables
We’re working to unlock the potential of smartphone and wearable data to discover new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cardiovascular disease, by establishing secure access to and fair use of smartphone and wearable data linked to healthcare records.
CVD-COVID-UK / COVID-IMPACT
CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT is a major research programme coordinated by the BHF Data Science Centre, bringing together a consortium of over 400 researchers across more than 50 organisations. The programme enables analysis of anonymised, linked, nationally collated healthcare datasets across the UK to investigate the relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease, as well as its impact on other health conditions and risk factors.
Diabetes Data Science Catalyst
This exciting partnership between the BHF Data Science Centre, Diabetes UK and HDR UK aims to develop improvements in our understanding of the link between cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Stroke Data Science Catalyst
A partnership between the BHF Data Science Centre, the Stroke Association, and HDR UK, using data to drive research into stroke prevention, treatments, and care.
Kidney Data Science Catalyst
This partnership between the BHF Data Science Centre, Kidney Research UK and HDR UK will enable researchers to securely access, link and analyse existing UK health data, speeding up the search for better kidney and cardiovascular disease prevention, treatments, and care.