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For Researchers

About the SDE

The East of England Secure Data Environment (SDE) provides secure access to NHS patient data and a range of services to accelerate research and innovation, leading to improved patient care. It is part of NHS England's Data for Research and Development Programme and is a member of the NHS Research Secure Data Environment Network.

The East of England Secure Data Environment (SDE) is operational and undergoing beta testing. We are supporting health and care research using de-identified NHS patient data and are open to project requests, including 'bring your own data' projects that require a secure workspace with data science tooling and computational support.

The SDE is designed to make it easier to undertake health data research that aims to improve outcomes in:

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The area

The East of England includes the following regions, with a total population of 7 million people:

  • Norfolk and Waveney
  • Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
  • Suffolk and North East Essex
  • Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes
  • Hertfordshire and West Essex
  • Mid and South Essex

Requesting access to the East of England SDE

To meet compliance and governance standards, we have a structured data and platform access process. This includes a request for detailed information about your project, the provision of a feasibility and cost proposal, and review by our data access committee.

Full details about this process can be found by emailing the East of England SDE team.

Before accessing the EoE East of England Secure Data Environment platform, researchers must read and accept the Acceptable Use Policy.

Our Data Services

At the East of England SDE, we are committed to making the UK the best place in the world for data-driven research. Our data, platform infrastructure and services offer significant opportunities to accelerate discoveries that benefit patient and population health.

The information below provides a summary of the services we can provide to researchers. Contact us if you have a specific service need not explicitly identified below - we will be delighted to discuss how we can best support you. We can also discuss the charges for data and platform access.

Key features

  • Secure Linux (AWS) Virtual Desktop Infrastructure on a cloud-based platform
  • Provision of published datasets
  • Provide tooling and computational support for Bring your own Data projects available on request
  • Unpublished/custom datasets available on request
  • Python and R (using JupyterLab development environment), plus other tools available

Platform services

A secure workspace standard package, including cloud-based Linux Virtual Desktops providing access to an instance of the platform, a suite of included tools, and support capabilities, will be implemented for each project.

Technical summary

  • Secure Linux (AWS) Virtual Desktops.
  • Flexible compute options to suit your needs, including Standard with 16GB RAM and 4 vCPUs.
  • Only pay for what you use.

Included tools

  • JupyterLab development environment
  • Python
  • R
  • LibreOffice
  • Airlock - for data or code egress
  • MySQL

Optional tools

Other tools available include the following, although note these may include additional service charges:

  • DBeaver (cross-platform SQL database editor and IDE)
  • Git import capability
  • Bring Your Own tool: users can request access to their own tool(s) to use for analysis purposes within the secure workspace (subject to technical and security review)
  • Bring your own code: users can request access to their own code to be used within the secure workspace (subject to technical and security review)
  • Secure workspace decommissioning and removal
  • Computing power increase/decrease: flexible compute power to suit your needs configurable for each workspace and session

Consultancy services

We offer a range of consultancy services to support data research projects. These include:

  • Data access application support
  • Feasibility assessment - including but not limited to data provenance summaries (origin, mode of collection, original purpose, for example)
  • Project management
  • Contracting and legal support

Data

We are able to provide curated datasets from participating health and care providers in secondary care settings across the East of England. We are aiming to achieve a harmonised data model (OMOP Common Data Model) across participating secondary care providers by summer 2025 to support data and cohort discovery.

Classes of data available currently include:

  • demographics
  • secondary care - events, diagnostic and procedure coding, lab results and prescribing

In addition to curated datasets, we also offer:

  • a refresh/update of a published dataset
  • to provide a synthetic dataset

A full list of available datasets is published on the HDR UK Health Data Gateway.

Contact details

If you’re interested in learning more about how the East of England SDE can solve your data challenges, email our team and tell us about your requirements. We can then schedule a call and provide further details. We're looking forward to supporting your research.