Accessing the SDE and the desktop

This chapter covers the NHS England’s Secure Data Environment (SDE) desktop, how to use GitLab and your data sets.

The safe setting of the SDE is a series of virtual machines run in the cloud which has access to Databricks, RStudio and other software which you can use to access and analyse patient data securely. To ensure the security of this patient data, the SDE has limitations on what you can output from the environment and what you can bring in. For example, there are rules around which packages can be installed and how code can be copied and pasted into the SDE. These are explained in more detail in the following sections.

You must have a user account to access the SDE. You will need to sign into the SDE with your existing credentials and two-factor authenticator method. For more information about setting up your account, visit the SDE set-up guide.

After you have signed in, you will need to select the Data Sharing Agreement (DSA), or project, you would like to work under. If you only have one DSA, you will skip this step.

You will now see the SDE Portal page. There are a number of options here, including the Import reference data service, which will be covered in a later chapter. Select Launch the virtual desktop.

You will see the session preparation progress indicator screen.

After a short wait, your virtual desktop will be displayed.

This video covers using the desktop area of the SDE and gives a brief introduction to using GitLab within the SDE.

You can use the desktop area for editing files, accessing GitLab and sending files to the safe output service.

If you are unfamiliar with version control or GitLab, we would recommend that you watch the video 'Version control in the SDE' which will help familiarise you with version control and how it works in the SDE.