JISC

Public Health, biomedical and health services research will be critical for the UK’S future development. Several UK universities are pursuing similar lines of health-related research, but there is as yet little sharing of data sources and a primary care services data repository provided by the National Centre for Primary Care Research has been discontinued. Within Imperial College London (ICL), health data resources are not being utilised efficiently. This project aims to commence a development process within ICL and with potential collaborators to improve health research data management and to establish linkages with NHS and non-academic users such as the Association of Public Health Observatories (APHO).

Objectives

• To develop metadata for current and planned Primary Care and Public Health (PCPH) data sources
• To obtain an overview of research data held by School of Public Health (SPH) and the extent of overlaps
• To develop a Research Data Management Plan (RDMP) for PCPH
• To integrate the PCPH primary care and national data repositories within the same framework
• To create a generic, extensible data access strategy and database design
• To automate standard aggregation, filtering, selection and reporting tasks from the data
• To produce policies and forms for reuse of aggregate health research data

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• A requirements analysis report
• A metadata dictionary
• An RDMP for PCPH together with a template for RDMP for other SPH departments
• A data discovery report for other SPH departments
• Technical infrastructure development including database design, guidance and user support documentation
• Standardized analytical workflows for data profiling and associated web reporting components
• A data access and analysis portal to the repository portal for SPH
• Online and group-based training to access and use data via the portal
• Standard JISC Final Reports and Project Closure Surveys