A pipeline for harmonising NHS Scotland laboratory data to enable national-level analyses.

Objective: Medical laboratory data together with prescribing and hospitalisation records are three of the most used electronic health records (EHRs) for data-driven health research. In Scotland, hospitalisation, prescribing and the death register data are available nationally whereas laboratory data is captured, stored and reported from local health board systems with significant heterogeneity. For researchers or other users of this regionally curated data, working on laboratory datasets across regional cohorts requires effort and time.

Mental health service use in children at risk of significant harm: A record linkage study of a child protection register.

Children with experience of maltreatment, abuse or neglect have higher prevalence of poor mental health. In the United Kingdom, child protection services identify children at risk of significant harm on the Child Protection Register (CPR) and intervene to reduce risk. Prevalence and incidence of mental health service use among this population of children are not well understood.

A profile of the Grampian Data Safe Haven, a regional Scottish safe haven for health and population data research.

There has been a recent emphasis to establish and codify large-scale or national Trusted Research Environments (TREs) in the United Kingdom, with a view to limit smaller, local TREs. The basis for this argument is that it avoids duplication of infrastructure, information governance, privacy risks, monopolies and will promote innovation, particularly with commercial partners. However, the work around establishing TREs in the UK largely ignores the long-established local TRE landscape in Scotland, and the way in which local TREs can actually improve data quality, solve technical architecture challenges, promote information governance and risk minimisation, and encourage innovation and collaboration (both academic and commercial).