COVID-19: Data and Connectivity – National Core Study (D&C-NCS)

The COVID-19 Data and Connectivity National Core Study will build a national health data research capability to support priority COVID-19 research questions. It draws on lessons for health data research which have been learnt from COVID, showing how urgency and focus during the pandemic have enabled data to be used to generate insights that transformed our knowledge of COVID-19. These lessons highlighted significant challenges with data access, fragmentation, the importance of transparency and concerns over inherent inequalities and sustainability across approaches.
The COVID-19 Data and Connectivity National Core Study will therefore ensure needed datasets are discoverable and accessible and linkages are established to answer the research questions prioritised by the five National Core Studies. These research questions and the supporting data and connectivity infrastructure will be critical in provisioning for the longer-term response to COVID.
Delivery of the COVID-19 Data and Connectivity Study will involve close interaction with data custodians, the public and patients, and providers of UK-wide national Trusted Research Environments (TREs) to ensure the required data is stored safely and securely, made readily available to approved researchers and is associated with compute, analytical and data services that make it easier to address priority research questions in a transparent and trustworthy way.

The Data and Connectivity study sits across the other National Core Studies and aims to build a national health data research capability to support COVID-19 research questions, ensuring datasets are discoverable and accessible and linkages are established to answer the priority research questions from the other five National Core Studies. Making data available for wider research use will increase the scope of benefits beyond the specific studies above, leading to unexpected benefits and boosting UK research capacity more generally, increasing return on investment for the NCS programme.
Data integration and harmonisation of methods and standards will enable rapid research and development of new interventions and technologies across the spectrum of COVID-19, and knowledge and technology transfer to other clinical and public health areas.
Over the next 6 months the Data and Connectivity study will:
1. Map the initial high priority COVID 19 datasets required by the National Core Studies.
2. Deliver the necessary data infrastructure and services (quality and timely data, ability to link the data and provide access to data for multiple researchers) in 5 Trusted Research Environments across the UK to allow the initial high priority research questions to be answered efficiently in a transparent and trustworthy way.
3. Deliver a single “shop window” for the COVID-19 National Core Studies to ensure the priority datasets for COVID 19 research are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) by enhancing the UK Health Data Research Innovation Gateway
Collation and linkage between datasets is critical to bringing the core studies together, ensuring that each of them can deliver against their policy priorities e.g. hospital data may not currently be linked with GP data and wider community data (e.g. socioeconomic data or data on housing and the built environment). Access, cleaning, linkage and use of these datasets together is needed to fully understand links between these factors and outcomes.
Delivery of the COVID-19 Data and Connectivity Study will involve close interaction with data custodians, the public and patients, and providers of UK-wide national Trusted Research Environments (TREs) to ensure the required data is stored safely and securely, made readily available to approved researchers and is associated with compute, analytical and data services that make it easier to address priority research questions in a transparent and trustworthy way.