HDR UK is facilitating health data access in the UK for researchers through The Innovation Gateway. This allows researchers to discover and access de-identified health data from various custodians. HDR UK has emphasized transparency and patient/public involvement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, HDR UK coordinated data-driven research efforts and accelerated data access to support priority studies. This included enabling a clinical trial to more rapidly recruit participants using daily COVID test results. HDR UK is also laying the foundations for an international health data alliance to support open COVID-19 research globally.

1. Lessons from the UK:
Data access, patient trust & real-world impact
with health data science
Varsha Khodiyar, PhD
HDR UK, Data Access Project Manager
Beilstein Open Science Symposium, 5 - 7 October 2021

2. Agenda
• About Health Data Research UK
• Facilitating data access through The Innovation Gateway
• Importance of transparency for patients and the lay public
• HDR UK’s impact on the coronavirus pandemic
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3. Health Data Research UK

4. Where this all started…
The need for a robust health data research infrastructure
in the UK
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Industrial Strategy for Life Sciences
(November 2017) Hubs for health
data research (digital innovation
hubs)
HDR UK Funded by:
British Heart Foundation, Chief Scientists
Office (Scotland), Health and Care Research
Wales, Health & Social Care R&D N. Ireland,
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council, Economic and Social Research
Council, Medical Research Council, National
Institute for Health Research, Wellcome, UK
Research and Innovation
Health Data Research UK asked to
lead delivery of this programme on
behalf of UK Research and
Innovation in September 2018
HDR UK aims to realise the
potential of UK’s health data
resources for patient and public
benefit Four-year programme launched in
September 2018

5. HDR UK’s mission is to unite the UK’s health data to
enable discoveries that improve people’s lives
Our 20-year vision is for
large scale data and advanced analytics to benefit every
patient interaction, clinical trial, biomedical discovery
and enhance public health.
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6. HDR UK is a UK-wide virtual institute, working across all four nations
HEALTH DATA
RESEARCH HUBS
BREATHE
DATA-CAN
Discover-NOW
Gut Reaction
INSIGHT
PIONEER
NHS DigiTrials
BHF Data Science Centre
TRAINING LOCATIONS
(Masters and PhD)
Belfast
Birmingham
Bristol
Cambridge
Edinburgh
Exeter
Leeds
London
Manchester
Oxford
CENTRAL TEAM OFFICES
Wellcome Trust
Great Ormond Street
DRIVE Unit
RESEARCH LOCATIONS
HDR UK Cambridge
HDR UK London
HDR UK Midlands
HDR UK North
HDR UK Oxford
HDR UK Scotland
HDR UK South-West
HDR UK Wales and
Northern Ireland
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7. Bringing together a complex data custodian landscape

8. Focused on national research priority areas
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10. The infrastructure to deliver this strategy
USING HEALTH DATA

11. Data access via ‘The Innovation Gateway’

12. The Innovation Gateway for health data discovery and access
www.healthdatagateway.org
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“Really impressed with this resource. I think as a gateway to search by data type and indication, it’s a really powerful tool.“
David Leather, GSK

13. Several options for discovering different types of health data
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14. Gain insight into data reusability prior to requesting access
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Technical details & metadata wheel Data utility

15. Layout for illustration purpose only
Health Data Gateway
Query Engine
Cohort Query
Dataset 1: 20K
Dataset 2: 3K
Dataset 3: 1K
…
Researchers
Cohort Discovery on the Innovation Gateway
Co-vars
Inc. Crit
Exc. Crit
Custodian controlled
Cohort Query Agents
Query Processing
Query Results
Total Patients: 23K
Statistical Disclosure Control Policies:
• User validation (e.g. Bona-fide Researcher)
• Low number suppression (e.g. >50)
• Query Count binning (e.g. 50, 60, 70, -)
• Query Rate limiting
• Researchers can reuse the cohort query to define their research protocol when submitting
their data access request
• Researchers will be able to reuse and compare cohort definitions between similar protocols
• Cohort definitions will be able to reuse phenotype definitions (asthma, diabetes) without
resorting to using ICD-10, Read, SNOMED-CT codes
Solution: Cohort Discovery enables researchers to discover, assess and request
access to potential datasets that exactly match the research project cohort definition
using standardized inclusion & exclusion criteria and co-variates
Datasets with female
patients between 18-35
who have asthma and
diabetes and who are
not smokers and not
pregnant
Cohort Definition
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L50nqIR6k98

16. Data Access Request workflow
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• HDR UK works with data custodians to
incorporate their due diligence
processes into the Five Safes form
• Five Safes form provides a standardized
way for researchers to request access to
data held by multiple data custodians
• Data custodians maintain decision
making responsibility on whether or not
to grant data access for each request
received

17. Data access & management based on the Five Safes framework
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https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2017/01/27/the-five-safes-data-privacy-at-ons/
1. Safe People
e.g. Approved researchers scheme
2. Safe Projects
Project proposal reviewed by governance
board convened by the data custodian
3. Safe Settings
Data access provided within a Trusted
Research Environment
4. Safe Data
Data supplied as deidentified to minimize
identification of individuals
5. Safe Output
Analysis outputs checked by data custodians
prior to release

18. A TRE is a Trusted Research Environment. Also known as ‘Data Safe Havens’, TREs
are highly secure computing environments that provide remote access to health data
for approved researchers to use in research that can save and improve lives.
What is a TRE?
Custodian makes
deidentified data
available within TRE
after data access
request approval.
Why are they important?
http://www.hdruk.ac.uk/trustedresearchenvironments
TRE green paper
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4594703 (2020)
Researcher is able to
specify the tools and
software they need
within the TRE to enable
their study.
Data analysis carried out
within the TRE and
outputs checked for
sensitivity by data
custodian.

19. Providing researchers with tools, training and standards
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www.hdruk.ac.uk/help-with-your-data/
Data Utility Matrix
International links
Data Quality Tool Evaluation
Data Officers Groups / Hubs
Position/consultation papers
Projects (Eg COVID-19)
Metadata completeness
SIGs (FHIR, Synthetic data,etc)

20. We are seeing people discovering UK health data from
across the world
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25,609 visits from around the world (1st Jan 2021 to 3rd Oct 2021)

21. Research transparency via ‘Patient and Public
Involvement and Engagement (PPIE)’

22. | 22
I am glad you're involving me from what
seems to be the beginning so that you can
actually take my concerns and address
them whilst helping the greater good
Patient / Public Voice Rep
“ It is essential that the public is included in
this ground-breaking work.
Margaret Rogers
Member of the HDR UK Public
Advisory Board
“
92 people consulted to inform decisions on
methods and process for clinical trial
recruitment
Consultation on COVID work across 7 UK-
wide patient and public networks with
168 responses.
16,500 contacts with patient & public
contributors across the institute in 2020
Strong Public Advisory Board providing
strategic guidance on all our work
An exemplar of working with public and patients

23. Monthly Open Door meetings aimed at the lay public
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24. Gateway Data Use Registers – closing the loop
A data use register offers a public record of how data is being used, by who and most importantly for
what purpose – Outputs linked to data
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• Search >600 datasets, tools, papers,
training
• Data visualisations
• Query data via cohort discovery (depth
& breadth)
• API Driven
• Data Access Requests
• Metadata Catalogues
• 5 Safes framework
• GA4GH Passports & Visas
• Open ID Connect integration
• LinkedIn & Google integration
• OpenAthens integration
• TRE integrations with Cohort
Discovery
• Publications from multiple TREs
• TRE Green Paper
• TRE white paper & reference
architecture
• TRE federation & interoperability
60% 40% 20%
DISCOVERY ACCESS ANALYSIS
= % of total
features built
OUTPUT SHARING FOR RE-USE
10%
• Publication outputs from data used
• Standards for Data use registers
• Datasets DOIs
• Automatic output linking to data
• Data Access Request/Data use
register integration

25. Impact of HDR UK on the coronavirus pandemic

26. Working in partnership to answer priority questions
- The National Core Studies
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Surveillance &
Epidemiology
Longitudinal Health
and Wellbeing
Transmission &
Environment
Immunity
Clinical Trials
Infrastructure & Support
Vaccines Therapeutics
Professor
Ian Diamond (ONS)
Professor
Nishi Chaturvedi (UCL)
Divya Chadha
Manek
(VTF/NIHR)
Professor
Patrick Chinnery
(MRC)
Professor
Andrew Curran (HSE)
Professor Paul Moss
(University of
Birmingham)
Collecting and
analysing data to
understand incidence
and prevalence broadly
and in different
settings in order to
inform response
measures.
Understanding the
impact of Covid-19 on
long term health
(including long covid)
to inform the design of
mitigating policies.
Establishing infrastructure to run
large scale trials for Covid-19 drugs
and vaccines without disrupting trials
for other diseases.
Taking samples to aid
understanding of
transmission of the
disease in workplace,
transport and public
places.
Understanding
serology as a useable
predictor of immunity
against Covid.
Data and Connectivity
Professor Andrew Morris (HDR UK working with ONS)
Making UK-wide health and administrative data available for linkage and accessible to catalyse Covid-19 research.

27. Our three key priorities at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic
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1
2
3
Co-ordinate and connect national data science
driven research efforts related to COVID-19
Accelerate access to UK-wide priority data relevant
to COVID-19 for research
Leverage the best of the UK’s health data science
capability to address the wider impact of the COVID-
19 pandemic, supporting vulnerable groups that will
be hardest hit
Support the UK government response
through regular reporting to SAGE

28. | 28
Enabled daily access to positive C-19 test results within
24 hours to increase recruitment.
Support also included:
• Daily problem solving and management scrums
• In-depth engagement with the ICO
• A public survey with over 90 responses
• Engagement with multiple data custodians
• Review by NHS Digital’s IGARD
• NHS Digital’s Trial team are now addressing the
remaining actions to support data flow
Provides confidence in concept for future trials that
require incident COVID cases
I'm so pleased you're looking into this as this is
something that can actually make a difference.
Patient / Public Voice Rep
“
Patient input shaping use of data for
PRINCIPLE clinical trial
“The creative energy that has gone into making the
progress you outline could well be saving lives soon.
You are making history.”
Chris Butler, Principle Trial Lead

29. Important discoveries by researchers using HDR UK
infrastructure
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Better
Care
Understanding Causes
of Disease
Clinical
Trials
Public
Health
High-resolution mapping of
COVID cases directly informed
public health policy in Wales
Understanding the impact of
COVID-19 on vulnerable
people with health conditions,
including those with cancer
and heart disease
RECOVERY trial used data to
establish that dexamethasone
reduces death by up to one
third in hospitalised patients
with severe respiratory
complications of COVID-19
Genetic sequencing of COVID-
19 to track which strains have
resulted in different outbreaks

30. 30
International COVID-19 Data Alliance (ICODA):
advancing open science practice globally
Vision
To unite international health research data to enable discoveries that benefit
everyone, everywhere, by reducing the harm of COVID-19; and enable an efficient
data response to future pandemics and other health challenges
To build an open international partnership that demonstrates trustworthiness to
support a rapid response to COVID-19 and a long-term alliance for making data
accessible to researchers and scientists around the world.
Mission
• Launched on 6 July 2020
• Convened by Health Data Research UK
• Focus on Lower and Middle-Income Countries
• Supported by the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator
• Driver Projects awarded to test the infrastructure and deliver COVID-19 research
OurTherapeutics Accelerator Funders
Convened by

31. Summary
• HDR UK is uniting the UK’s health data access for researchers.
• The Innovation Gateway facilitates discovery and access to health data by researchers.
• Increasing the FAIRness of data, by increasing the F, A, I of metadata, and indicating the
R of data via metadata assessment.
• Demonstration of the importance of patient and lay public involvement in all aspects of
health data research.
• HDR UK has had an important role to play in the UK’s response to the pandemic.
• HDR UK is laying the foundations for an international alliance to enable a data-centric
response to COVID-19 and other health challenges
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32. Thank you
Find out more:
www.hdruk.ac.uk
@HDR_UK
Visit the Gateway: healthdatagateway.org
Find out about the UK Alliance: healthdata.org