Kent, Medway and Sussex Secure Data Environment

The Kent, Medway and Sussex Secure Data Environment (KMS SDE) is unlocking the potential of health and social care data to support your research and help to improve the health of the community. This supports the government’s 10-year health plan: ‘data will fuel continuous learning in the NHS, support research and improve care’.

KMS SDE is part of NHS England’s Data for Research and Development Programme, a member of the NHS Research Secure Data Environment Network, and part of the Southern SDE Partnership.

The KMS SDE: 

• covers a population of 3.8m across Sussex, Kent and Medway 
• has subject matter experts who support researchers throughout the lifecycle of their project from initial feasibility to planning for at scale implementation (see our consultancy services below) 
• has a regional population demographic that offers an exceptional opportunity for research teams to explore issues that can inform local system transformation now and also provide findings to inform future national policy 
• has regional challenges that reflect those faced nationally - the demography and scale of the issues means that the KMS region is facing these challenges some years ahead of the rest of England 
• is working towards providing researchers with access to data within four weeks of your final Data Access Committee approval 
• includes many tools from Azure to Visual Studio

The information below provides a summary of the services provided to researchers by the KMS SDE. Contact us if you have a specific requirement not explicitly identified below and we will discuss how we can best work with you.

The KMS SDE data includes individuals: 

• registered with a general practice, within the Kent, Medway and Sussex boundary
• resident within the Kent, Medway and Sussex boundary
• who attend a care setting within the Kent, Medway and Sussex boundary. 

Most data is available at Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) level, representing 400–1,200 households and 1,000–3,000 residents. 

The datasets contain more than 4 billion GP encounters across the region, covering 100% of practices in Kent and Medway and 94% in Sussex, spanning 20 years. 

All data is patient-level, sourced from both local service providers and national feeds. Researchers can view the data source within each dataset.

We can provide the following curated published datasets

Primary care:

• Medications
• Immunisations
• Problems
• Prescribing
• Encounters
• Appointments
• Referrals
• Clinical interactions
• Long term conditions

Secondary care:

• Emergency admissions
• Planned admissions
• Specialist medical care
• In patients
• Out patients
• Accident and emergency
• 999 Ambulance
• 111
• Mental health (service, type, locality)
• Maternity
• Minor Injuries Unit (MIU)

Community (in home care, care homes and community hospitals):

• Care plans
• Visits
• Care contacts
• Referrals
• Diagnosis
• Referral to treatment

Social care and voluntary services:

• Hospice care (only in Sussex currently)
• Care contacts
• Care packages
• Care home information
• Continuing health care
• Hospice at home
• Fire safety

In addition to curated datasets, we also provide:

• a refresh/update of a published dataset
• the option to request an unpublished, bespoke dataset
• a 'bring your own data' service (publicly available/reference)
• a 'bring your own data' service (identifiable/cohort)

A full list of available datasets is published on the Health Data Research Gateway via the KMS SDE Data Custodian page. Any of the other datasets mentioned above can be sourced by the KMS SDE team. 

If your organisation has datasets that can be added to our published dataset collection, please contact the KMS SDE team at [email protected]. 

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

A secure Linux (AWS) or Windows (Azure) VDI.

Shared workspace per project supporting both Windows and Linux desktop environments.

Package Manager utilities for self-serve package downloads.

Included tools

Gitea | Jupyter Notebook | LibreOffice | Metadata Works | Python | R Statistical Language | RStudio | SQL Server & Management Studio (SSMS) | sqlcmd | VDI - Linux (AWS supported) | VDI - Windows (Azure supported) | Visual Studio (VS) Code 

Optional tools

(May incur additional service charges)

PostgreSQL

Additional platform services

Bring your own code, tools and data: researchers can submit code, tools or data for feasibility and validation checks. If approved, these can then be added to the researcher’s secure environment.

Some bespoke and third party products within the SDE can be supported but will need to be considered at the feasibility assessment.

Decommissioning and removal of a secure workspace.

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

• feasibility
• design/implementation for scalable solutions – health tech
• support for grant applications – subject matter expertise

Other consultancy services, from initial support with bid writing and feasibility assessment through to design and scalability of innovation solutions, can be discussed directly with the SDE team.

When a project is approved to use our data, we publish information about that project in our data use register.

The register gives a summary of the project to show how your data will be used.

To find out more about Kent, Medway and Sussex SDE:

• email the team at [email protected]
• visit the Kent, Medway and Sussex SDE webpage

If you are interested in using the KMS SDE for your project, submit an enquiry form.