The Eastern England SDE supports a wide range of research use cases ranging from discovery science and epidemiology to real-world evidence and clinical trial recruitment. It offers secure access to unique NHS datasets, open-source analytics tools, and hands-on support throughout your research journey, including governance, data linkage, and bespoke dataset creation

Yes. The Eastern England SDE platform is ISO 27001-certified and compliant with the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit. It operates under ethical and legal approvals from the Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG) and the Research Ethics Committee (REC), with access to data in line with by the Five Safes framework. 

Yes. The Eastern England SDE allows researchers to securely bring your own datasets – such as academic or clinical trial datasets – into the environment and, if required and/or appropriate, link them with NHS data. This is ideal for combining your study datasets with clinical data and/or creating a safe and secure place for analysing or collaborating on your own research datasets.  

You can access curated, de-identified NHS secondary care datasets, including secondary care prescribing, diagnostic lab results, and longitudinal health records, from NHS organisations in the East of England. Many fields or data items available through the SDE are not available as part of national NHS data repositories. More datasets, including regional mental health data and linkage to national commissioning datasets, will be available by the end of 2026. Explore information about the data available here. 

Yes. The platform includes pre-installed, open-source tools such as R, Python using Jupyter Labs / Notebook or RStudio IDEs. PostgreSQL tooling is also provided. The platform is closed to external internet access, but full mirrors of the PyPI (Python) and CRAN (R) package libraries are available within the SDE.  

You may also bring your own tools and workflows into the environment, depending on your research needs. 

The core tools are made available under open licence and will generally not incur an additional charge. Additional commercially-licenced tools such as STATA can also be made available if required – costs will vary depending on requirements. 

Accessing data through the Eastern England SDE is through a robust process that is designed to ensure that projects meet the highest legal, ethical, and security standards. Our expert team supports you every step of the way to make the process as smooth and efficient as possible. 

Find out about our process here.  

Timelines vary based on project complexity and governance requirements. However, the SDE team supports you throughout the process to ensure requests are well-prepared, which helps streamline reviews. We are aiming for straight-forward approvals to be provided within eight weeks of receiving a comprehensive Data Access Request form. Timelines can be significantly improved where research leads respond promptly to any queries from the SDE team and provide complete information when requested. 

Costs depend on the type of support and services required, including data provisioning, platform access, and consultancy. The SDE offers flexible and cost-effective packages tailored to individual research needs. Find out more here.

The SDE provides: 

• Data as a Service: Access to de-identified NHS datasets 

• Platform as a Service: A secure, high-performance research environment with pre-installed tools 

• Consultancy as a Service: End-to-end research support, including governance, dataset creation / curation, and support navigating compliance 

Yes. Approved researchers may be able to link their own datasets with NHS data within the SDE to create bespoke datasets for analysis. The linkage process requires separate processing is conducted securely and in line with governance protocols. 

Researchers can safely export approved outputs (not raw data) from the platform following an output-checking process, in line with the Five Safes framework. This ensures patient privacy is maintained while enabling you to share findings and publish results. 

Yes. If appropriate, your dataset can be curated and preserved within the Eastern England SDE for future research use, subject to governance approvals. This enables long-term value from your work and supports reproducibility and collaboration

Yes. Through approved processes and with appropriate agreements in place, data held in the Eastern England SDE can be linked with datasets from other NHS providers or research environments. The SDE team can advise on linkage options and governance requirements. 

If you can’t find what you need on this website, contact our team who are here to help.

Please provide a few details about your project in our enquiry form and a member of our team will be in touch soon.