Clinical Data

The Clinical Data Science and Technology Platform (STP) provides UCL researchers with access to multi-study clinical data licenses (MSL) held by UCL.

About the STP and MSLs

Currently, UCL holds an MSL for the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) specifically CPRD Aurum and Gold. Our multi-study CPRD license also includes data from primary care linked to:

Office for National Statistics (ONS) Death Registration data
HES Admitted Patient Care (HES APC) data, and
CPRD's Small Area Level Datasets

The license is held by UCL’s Centre for Advanced Research Computing (ARC) and managed by the Clinical Data STP. The STP is led by Professor Irene Petersen with support of a Steering Committee comprising CPRD users from across UCL. The costs of the MSL are shared between its users.

Find out more below about UCL’s CPRD MSL and how you can access it.

Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)

Researchers are expected to make a contribution to the Clinical Data STP if they wish to make use of UCL’s CPRD multi-study license.

Prospective CPRD user guidance

Prospective CPRD user guidance (PDF, UCL login required)

This guide provides details of costs to include in your grant applications, including fellowships, where access to the multi-study licence is required.

Clinical Data STP Access and Contribution Policy

Clinical Data STP Access and Contribution Policy (Word, UCL login required)
Contribution exemption/reduction application form – for PhD students (Word, UCL login required)
Contribution exemption/reduction application form – for PIs (Word, UCL login required)

Policy document developed by the Clinical Data STP Steering Committee setting out expectations for contributions from researchers to the cost of the license. Contributions are typically expected from researchers with grant funding and PhD students with research costs. If there are limits to funds available to support your research a contribution exemption/reduction process is available overseen by the Clinical Data STP Steering Group.

Fair usage policy (to follow soon)

Policy laying out expectations of researchers accessing the CRPD multi-study license and the expectations researchers can have on the service they will be provided.

Attribution policy (to follow soon)

Policy setting out how the contribution of the Clinical Data STP and the Nominated Users should be acknowledged in any publications stemming from access to UCL’s CPRD multi-study license.

Contact us

To discuss your research idea, or for queries on accessing the CPRD MSL, contact clinicaldatastp@ucl.ac.uk.

Useful links

CPRD linked data: details of the datasets available via CPRD and how they are derived & linked.
NHS England Hospital Episode Statistics Data Dictionary: provides details of the data fields available in HES.
CPRD ethics approval reference
CPRD data safeguarding details
CPRD Research Data Governance application guidance including links to the CPRD electronic Research Applications Portal (eRAP).