Legacy NHS England engagement forums with the data enabled research community to improve the Data Access Request Service (DARS)

NHS England works with the data enabled research community to improve health and care through the transparent and effective use of its data assets for research.

Before 2025, formal engagement groups with the research community were one of the main ways NHS England supported this work. The work of these groups helped shape the Data Access Request Service (DARS) and led to ongoing collaboration with research funders to develop and deliver DARS webinars for researchers.

Legacy NHS England research community engagement forums, 2016-2024

During 2024 NHS England held two research community engagement groups designed to work in tandem to support improvements to data access for data enabled research:

Strategic Research Stakeholder Group (SRAG)

The NHS England Stakeholder Research Advisory Group (SRAG) provided a forum for discussing, through the lens of data enabled researchers, the work of NHS England to support data enabled research. It aimed to identify the key areas where advice would be valuable

Data Enabled Research Advisory Group (DERAG)

The NHS England Data Enabled Research Advisory Group (DERAG) worked with NHS England to generate advice on the priority areas decided by SRAG.

2016-2023, Research Advisory Group

SRAG and DERAG were designed to consolidate learning from the Research Advisrory Group (RAG), which ran from 2016-2023.

Building a strategic partnership with the research ecosystem, RAG aimed to improve data and data services, enabling better, faster research which delivered benefits for patients and the public.

Copies of the RAG membership, terms of reference and minutes can be viewed on the national archive.

Further information

Data Access Request Service (DARS)

The Data Access Request Service (DARS) can offer clinicians, researchers and commissioners the data required to help improve NHS services. We handle applications, process data and provide access to specific sets of data when requests are approved.

Last edited: 10 June 2026 3:30 pm