Enabling research and clinical trials

Trusted Research Environments

We've continued to provide access to data in Trusted Research Environments (TREs) for nationally prioritised COVID-19 research questions. TREs allow researchers to safely analyse de-identified data in approved systems, supported by collaboration tools.

We published the first report using NHS Digital’s TRE for whole population research on COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease on 23 February 2021 with researchers from Health Data Research UK (HDRUK) and the British Heart Foundation Data Science. A pre-print report is available.

Accelerating researchers’ access to data

Further researcher education sessions were conducted on 15 and 17 March 2021 for 175 attendees with the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), HDRUK, MRC Regulatory Support Centre and the Health Quality Improvement Partnership.

These sessions focus on improving awareness of the available data assets, access routes, and approval requirements so that researchers can make better use of health and social care datasets.

RECOVERY

We continued to support recruitment and provide data to the RECOVERY trial through NHS DigiTrials.

The trial reported on 11 February 2021 that use of Tocilizumab reduces COVID mortality for hospitalised patients with severe COVID 19, shortens their time to discharge and reduces the need for mechanical ventilation.

NHS COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry

We continued to operate the NHS COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry, in partnership with the NIHR, to facilitate recruitment into vaccine trials and accelerate the identification of safe and effective vaccines.

As of 26 March 2021, around 460,000 people have registered an interest in being contacted for recruitment into vaccine trials with 144,000 eligible volunteers invited into one of six trials.

On 11 March 2021, the UK Phase 3 trial of the Novavax candidate vaccine reported further positive results. Around half of the participants were recruited through the Vaccine Registry.