The Wessex Secure Data Environment (SDE) has successfully onboarded its first dataset, confirming it as fully operational for secure data handling. This is a crucial step for the full launch in early 2025, that will support advanced research to improve patient outcomes regionally.
The dataset onboarded is for a bladder cancer study, ‘Describing Overall Survival and First-Line Treatment Patterns in High-Risk Invasive Urothelial Bladder Carcinoma Post-Resection Patients’, led by Professor Simon Crabb, Principal Investigator and Medical Oncologist at UHS. The project aims to improve the treatment of patients with high-risk invasive urothelial bladder cancer across Wessex who are being treated at UHS as the tertiary cancer centre for the region.
The data onboarding milestone provides real-world demonstration of the SDE’s operational capability and readiness to support advanced research, while maintaining the highest standards of privacy and governance.
The onboarding of the initial dataset demonstrates critical technical processes, ensuring compliance with our legal and regulatory framework and the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) designed to uphold these standards.
Processes proven at the data onboarding milestone include securely transferring data into the SDE from external sources, applying robust de-identification processes, linking data across systems, validating its integrity and accessibility within the platform, and testing the SDE’s key safeguards, such as encryption, data airlock systems, and access controls.
This success builds on the launch of the Pre-release SDE platform in December 2024, which marked legal and regulatory assurance the technical platform meets stringent data protection and security standards for handling NHS data.
In line with the Pre-release SDE’s interim governance arrangements, the Bladder Cancer study has independently secured Health Research Authority approval.
Approval to move the dataset onto the SDE was given by the University Hospital Southampton (UHS) Data Access Committee, 3 September 2024, with data flowed into the Wessex SDE on 17 January 2024.
By bringing together different types of data, from multiple departments, in a single consistent dataset using the SDE, we will be able to analyse the ‘real world’ approaches to patient care taken by our clinical teams. In doing so, we will be able to benchmark our compliance with national gold standard treatment options to ensure that patients are receiving the best care possible.
In addition to highlighting options for immediate changes in patient care pathways, we anticipate that this will allow for new research hypotheses to be generated for future prospective research studies.
Further information about the research and public benefits can be found in our case study.