Your questions answered

What areas are covered?

The East Midlands Secure Data Environment includes the following cities and counties:

  • Derby
  • Derbyshire
  • Leicester
  • Leicestershire
  • Lincoln
  • Lincolnshire
  • Northampton
  • Northamptonshire
  • Nottingham 
  • Nottinghamshire
  • Rutland

Which organisations are involved?

The Secure Data Environment is a partnership between local NHS organisations, universities, specialist technology providers and frontline NHS and social care staff.

What makes Secure Data Environments different?

There are a number of improvements that Secure Data Environments will bring compared to the way NHS data is made available for research today.

These include:

  1. Data is accessed in one place, rather than copied or shared amongst individual research projects

  2. Data cannot be taken out of the protected environment. Researchers are able to analyse data within the virtual "walls" of the Secure Data Environment

  3. Because Secure Data Environments will bring together data from multiple NHS organisations, it enables these different sources of data to be linked together, giving researchers a more complete picture of the health of the population as a whole

  4. Approved access: researchers will need to apply and can only access the data if their project is approved by the NHS.

  5. More efficient for researchers: instead of multiple copies of data being sent out to multiple researchers by every NHS organisation separately, researchers can access all of the availbale data they need in a single secure location.

  6. Secure Data Environments will have to work to the highest privacy and security standards as well as comply with all data protection legislation and regulatory guidelines for research. This means protecting and safeguarding the identity of NHS patients and service users at all times.

How is the Secure Data Environment funded?

Funding from NHS England was awarded to develop the Secure Data Environment solution for the East Midlands in 2023/24. This funding is part of the national Data for Research and Development programme.

Once it is fully established, the East Midlands Secure Data Environment will be managed by your local NHS organisations. The costs of maintaining the Secure Data Environment platform will be funded from fees and charges paid by research projects/research organisations who are approved to access and use it.

How is the East Midlands SDE being delivered?

There is a dedicated programme team which brings together local expertise from the NHS, universities, technology providers and our communities. The programme is hosted by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust

When will the Secure Data Environment start?

The work to develop the East Midlands platform is happening now and the aim is for it to be completed in 2025.