The Health Informatics Centre: a Regional Safe Haven and Trusted Research Environment Enabling World-Leading Research

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Health Informatics Centre

T2 - a Regional Safe Haven and Trusted Research Environment Enabling World-Leading Research

AU - Ward, Laura

AU - Johnston, Jenny

AU - Milburn, Keith R.

AU - Hall, Christopher

AU - Jones, Claire

AU - Guignard-Duff, Magalie

AU - Krueger, Susan

AU - Milligan, Gordon

AU - Hampton, Jill

AU - Walls, Richard

AU - Cole, Christian

N1 - © The Authors.

PY - 2026/3/16

Y1 - 2026/3/16

N2 - Introduction: The Health Informatics Centre (HIC) is a regional Scottish Safe Haven dedicated to secure data management, ensuring its integrity, confidentiality, and availability through a robust information governance framework. Methods: As a data processor, HIC is responsible for the secure curation, storage and provision of research data extracts. Research-ready data are made available to approved researchers via our customisable cloud Trusted Research Environment (TRE). Results: The granular regional data held spans over two decades and represents approximately 20% of the Scottish population. Data sources include clinical, hospital, laboratory, imaging and research datasets which can be linked to new, and existing datasets. The data is quality-assured and released as project-specific extracts, ensuring robust privacy protection and research readiness. HIC’s infrastructure is secure-by-design and supports high-performance computing, advanced data analytics, and is customisable to researchers needs. Conclusion: HIC operates within well-defined and transparent processes, with on-going improvements aimed to simplify information governance pathways across Scotland. HIC’s data ecosystem supports a range of research fields, and we can support or collaborate on. Ongoing advancements in infrastructure and methodologies will continue to enhance data for re-use, foster open science, and support future innovations in research on sensitive data.

AB - Introduction: The Health Informatics Centre (HIC) is a regional Scottish Safe Haven dedicated to secure data management, ensuring its integrity, confidentiality, and availability through a robust information governance framework. Methods: As a data processor, HIC is responsible for the secure curation, storage and provision of research data extracts. Research-ready data are made available to approved researchers via our customisable cloud Trusted Research Environment (TRE). Results: The granular regional data held spans over two decades and represents approximately 20% of the Scottish population. Data sources include clinical, hospital, laboratory, imaging and research datasets which can be linked to new, and existing datasets. The data is quality-assured and released as project-specific extracts, ensuring robust privacy protection and research readiness. HIC’s infrastructure is secure-by-design and supports high-performance computing, advanced data analytics, and is customisable to researchers needs. Conclusion: HIC operates within well-defined and transparent processes, with on-going improvements aimed to simplify information governance pathways across Scotland. HIC’s data ecosystem supports a range of research fields, and we can support or collaborate on. Ongoing advancements in infrastructure and methodologies will continue to enhance data for re-use, foster open science, and support future innovations in research on sensitive data.

KW - Electronic Health Record

KW - Trusted Research Environment

KW - Medical Imaging

KW - Data Governance

KW - Common Data Model

U2 - 10.23889/ijpds.v8i6.3320

DO - 10.23889/ijpds.v8i6.3320

M3 - Article

SN - 2399-4908

VL - 8

JO - International Journal of Population Data Science

JF - International Journal of Population Data Science

IS - 6

ER -