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Thames Valley and Surrey Secure Data Environment

The Thames Valley and Surrey Secure Data Environment (SDE) provides secure access to 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.

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The TVS SDE provides secure access to linked health and care data from NHS organisations across the TVS region.

Organisations in scope include:

Acute trusts (9), community and mental health NHS trusts (6), primary care practices (350), and primary care networks across three integrated care boards:

  • Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire West ICB
  • Frimley Health and Care ICB
  • Surrey Heartlands ICB

Two additional acute trusts:

  • Milton Keynes University Hospital
  • Great Western Hospital

Two ambulance services:

  • South Central Ambulance Service
  • South East Coast Ambulance Service

Services summary

Contact us for any specific requirements not listed – we would be happy to discuss how we can support you.

Key features
  • Expertise in delivering multimodal datasets, including free text image reports, clinical letters, diagnostic imaging, digital pathology and genetic/genomic data.
  • Data is processed within the SDE to remove identifiers, with customisation to meet project-specific requirements.
  • Data drawn from a wide range of clinical systems across the region and stored at scale.
  • Project-specific data extracts based on a defined cohort are generated and made available in a secure workspace.
  • Contextual information about each dataset is linked to national data standards and presented using a metadata catalogue.
  • Frequently requested data in key therapeutic areas is available with optional user-defined derivations. Data will be organised to reflect your specific requirements.
  • Secure virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is provided on a cloud-based platform.
  • Secure package mirror for tools and libraries is available to users with approved projects.

Platform services

Data for each project is provisioned within a dedicated secure workspace that supports team collaboration. Users can deploy their own isolated VMs, ensuring user privacy and data security whilst utilising a shared storage space for collaboration. Users in the same workspace have access to a shared airlock system for controlled data import and export.

Additional platform services

'Bring your own tool': users can bring their own tools, subject to approval, to use for analysis purposes within the secure workspace.

Secure backup and restoration services.

'Bring your own code': users can bring their own code, subject to approval, to be used within the secure workspace.

Flexible compute power to suit user needs.

Technical summary

Secure Windows or Linux Azure Virtual Machines with a custom image, designed by users. 

A wide range of Azure compute and GPU options are available, including B-series, Dsv5, Easv5, NCv3, and NVadsA10_v5. This flexibility enables users to balance performance with cost.

Included tools

Python, Anaconda | R, RStudio | Jupyter Notebook | Visual Studio Code | PostgreSQL | Azure Storage Explorer | Git | LibreOffice | Package mirror with access to pypi, conda, docker, apt, R and more

Optional tooling

Additional services can be deployed on demand within a workspace to support diverse user requirements. Tools include:

  • Azure SQL Database - structured data storage and querying
  • Azure Machine Learning - building, training, and deploying ML models
  • Azure Databricks - advanced data engineering and collaborative analytics
  • Gitea - a self-hosted Git platform for code versioning and collaboration

Consultancy services

The TVS SDE offers a range of consultancy services to support user projects. These include:

  • access to additional data and new derivations
  • supplementary data insights and assurance
  • access to routinely collected data that is not currently held within the SDE
  • guidance on data access applications and feasibility reviews
  • trial feasibility support
  • trial recruitment support
  • support for study peer review
  • medical writing support
  • access to clinical, scientific, and data expertise
  • regulatory submission support
  • support for developing or validating clinical algorithms and technologies
  • clinical pathway mapping support
  • co-design of services support

Data services

The SDE has a particular focus on:

  • oncology (cancer)
  • cardiology (cardiovascular)
  • critical care medicine
  • haematology (blood)
  • immunology (autoimmune)
  • hepatology (liver)
  • neurology
  • dermatology
  • gastroenterology (gastrointestinal)
  • obstetrics and gynaecology (women’s health and maternity)
  • mental health

Across these areas, we can provide a wide range of curated row-level patient data, including:

  1. Secondary care:
    • Demographics
    • Diagnostics
    • Prescribing
    • Episodes
    • Treatments
    • Outcomes
    • Maternity
    • Genomics
  2. Mental health
  3. Community care

We are working on bringing in data from other care settings and partners from across the region, such as primary care and ambulance services.

Contact details

To find out more:

Last edited: 1 May 2025 12:39 pm