Data Safe Haven (GMC293)

The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and doctors. Consistent with that purpose, the GMC uses research to help us to make sure that our policies and decisions are based on evidence. We undertake some research projects ourselves, commission some from external researchers and allow third parties access to GMC data where there is a clear public interest in their research proposal.

For some research projects, we need to give researchers access to the data we hold. At present we put contracts in place with researchers to make sure that our data is always stored securely, processed fairly and lawfully and used only for the agreed research purpose. Any results are reported or published with the results fully anonymised. Most data is aggregated, anonymised or pseudonymised before it is given to researchers.

We are seeking to explore a third party hosted safe haven environment to allow access to researchers to perform activities in a secure setting. We would envisage using such an environment where: