Yorkshire and Humber Secure Data Environment

The Yorkshire and Humber Secure Data Environment (SDE)'s ambition is to build a strong reputation for innovative health data research, and to improve patient care and safety, transform services, reduce inequalities, and enhance life chances for the 5.7m people we serve.

Our proven track record includes flagship research projects spanning all three of our integrated care boards (ICBs) – NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB, NHS South Yorkshire ICB and NHS West Yorkshire ICB.

Two-way, patient and public involvement and engagement on how data is used for research lies at the heart of our approach. We are also working closely with a wide range of health and care professionals to ensure we maximise the benefits that are returned to the system.

Already in place is an extensive range of mature data infrastructure, products and services, including the CUREd+ and Connected Bradford research databases, both of which provide linked, longitudinal datasets for research. The region also hosts the National Pathology Imaging Cooperative and DATA-CAN (the Health Data Research UK Hub for Cancer), alongside the South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub and the Smart Data Research UK Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service.

In development is a managed service for researchers, which will enable facilitated access to this diverse range of data infrastructure and products. It will be delivered by a team of experts in information governance and ethics, research study design, data management, data analysis and software engineering.

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

Technical summary

GPU Compute Virtual Machine

Secure Windows VDI

Secure Ubuntu Azure VDI

Standard 4 cores 32GB of memory

Included tools

Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Excel | Firefox | Google | BigQuery | Google Cloud Platform | Office 365 | Python | R Statistical Language | RStudio | VDI - Ubuntu (Azure supported) | VDI - Windows (AWS supported)

Optional tools

(may incur additional service charges)

Anaconda Python | atlan Data Catalog | atom | AWS Research & Engineering Studio (RES) | data build tool (dbt) | DataHub | Docker | gcc compilers | Git | Gitea | GitHub | GitLab | Java | Jupyter Notebook | JupyterHub | JupyterLab | LaTeX | Mamba | MATLAB | Microsoft .NET framework | MS SQL/SSIS | MySQL | nano | Natural Language Processing | Nexus Repository Manager | NoSQL (Not Only SQL) | Notepad++ | PanDoc | PERL | PostgreSQL | Power BI | PyCharm Community Edition | RO-Crate | SAS | Spark | spark-shell | SPSS | Spyder | SQL Server & Management Studio (SSMS) | Stata | Tortoise Git | vim | Visual Studio (VS) Code | Visual Studio (VS) Code extensions | weka

Additional platform services

These include:

• 'bring your own code'
• 'bring your own tool'
• computing power review/increase
• GPU compute VM
• project archive
• request for an unlisted product - licensing required
• request for an unlisted Product - open source
• secure workspace decommission

All requests for additional services are subject to SDE approval.

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

Bid writing support | Clinical trial outcomes, recruitment and support | Communications and marketing | Contracting and legal support | Data access application support | Specialist roles, such as data analyst, data scientist or health economist | Design/implementation for scalable health tech solutions | Project feasibility assessment including clinical trials | Health economic analysis and evaluations | Industry to health and social care collaboration support | Information governance (IG) consultancy service | Project management | Provision of specialist research and research design | Retrospective studies | Grant application support – subject matter expertise | Evaluation services | Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE)

We can provide curated published datasets from:

• primary care
• secondary care
• prescribing
• diagnostics
• community
• mental health
• mortality
• maternity
• demographics
• social care
• vaccinations

In addition to curated datasets, we also offer:

• 'bring your own data' (publicly available/reference)
• 'bring your own data' (identifiable/cohort)
• the option to request an unpublished, bespoke dataset
• the option to link your own data
• mapping to OMOP CDM
• a demonstration environment with a synthetic dataset
• refresh/updated of published data  
• linked datasets

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

To find out more:

• email the team at [email protected].
• visit the Yorkshire and Humber SDE website

You can also follow us on X.com, BlueSky and LinkedIn.