QResearch has extensive, robust protection of confidentiality for patients and the practices.
Key features
- QResearch has ongoing approval from the East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee. (Ref: 23/EM/0166, IRAS project ID 329187). All previous approval letters and amendments can be found in the here.
- The processing of patient identifiers for secure data linkage without individual consent has been supported under ‘section 251’ by the Health Research Authority following advice from the Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG reference 25/CAG/0147).
- Research studies which utilise QResearch data need to obtain approval from the QResearch Scientific Committee.
- Researchers only receive subsets of anonymised data required to answer their research question
- Special protection is employed to protect practice identity
- The QResearch servers are in secure environments
- Data transfers are encrypted
- Use of the data is strictly controlled. QResearch meets the standards of the NHS England Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT reference 8HX86)
QResearch servers
There are several servers involved in the QResearch project.
(a) The data collection servers hosted by the GP System Suppliers.
(b) The research servers, which house the resulting aggregated database, and which are located at QMUL. The research computers are dedicated isolated computers (i.e. it is not linked to the NHSnet or external networks). These computers are the single point of access to the data collected by QResearch.
Data transfers
QResearch data is transferred to Queen Mary University of London. The data transfer is secure as the data are encrypted.
Please see our Data Privacy Impact Assessment and this diagram which gives more details and illustrates the data flows.
Use of the data
Queen Mary University of London is contractually bound not to use the data collected by QResearch for any other purpose than QResearch.
Access by researchers is carefully regulated since they will receive patient level sub-sets of the database required to answer their research questions. See Information for Researchers.
Morbidity analyses will be undertaken as appropriate - see Using QResearch for morbidity data analysis. The results will be included on the website - see Research for a list of project summaries, Publications for lists of research outputs, and Validation and initial reports for a list of initial reports produced for the Department of Health.