Clinical Practice Research Datalink

The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) is a real-world research service delivered by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency with support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

CPRD collects anonymised patient data from a network of GP practices across the UK. The data encompasses 60 million patients, including 18 million currently registered.

Cancer data are provided by NHS England National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) (formerly Public Health England). The linked NCRAS CPRD data sets, available to request, include Cancer Registration data, the Systemic Anti-Cancer Treatment (SACT) Data set and the National Radiotherapy Dataset (RTDS). The application process for access to CPRD linked cancer data is controlled and governed by CPRD. 

Details of the  requirements to access these  are detailed in the NCRAS documentation available from the CRPD website. Please be aware that applications for CPRD linked cancer registration data takes longer normal CPRD requests due to data being supplied by 2 organisations. It currently takes around 12-18 months from protocol approval to delivery of cancer data.

The NDRS Data Release Register lists those organisations that have received data since the service’s transition to NHS Digital. Here you can find examples of past CPRD data releases.

View the NDRS data release register list on the NHS Digital website. 

Access to patient level data is dependent on approval of a study protocol via the Research Data Governance (RDG) process. All required linked data sources must be requested on the application form. Additionally, researchers who are first time users of a linked data set must contact the CPRD Observational Research Team to discuss their requirements before submitting their application. Data are only provided by CPRD when part of a data extract is linked to CPRD primary care data. 

You can find out more about requesting linked data from the CPRD website.

If you have any questions you can contact the team by emailing [email protected].