The Scottish National Safe Haven
Supported by eDRIS at Public Health Scotland and Research Data Scotland, the Scottish National Safe Haven enables secure access to data covering the Scottish population for approved research in the public benefit.
About the Scottish National Safe Haven
The Scottish National Safe Haven is a governed Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for accredited researchers to work on approved projects of public benefit using sensitive data. It is a secure environment where national level data for a research project is uploaded and accessed.
Access to this data is facilitated by Research Data Scotland (RDS) and the electronic Data Research and Innovation Service (eDRIS) within Public Health Scotland.
Datasets available
Through the Researcher Access Service (RAS) – a digital platform managed by RDS in partnership with eDRIS – researchers can apply to access data from within the National Safe Haven.
Examples of datasets available through the National Safe Haven include:
acute hospital episodes held in the national Scottish Morbidity Records
data held in the Unscheduled Care Data Mart (A&E, Scottish Ambulance Service, GP out of hours, NHS24)
prescription data
National Records of Scotland (NRS) births, stillbirths, infant deaths
National Records of Scotland (NRS) death records
Scottish Birth Record (SBR)
COVID tests, vaccinations
COG UK Metadata
Find out what datasets are available through the National Safe Haven.
The Research Data Access Pathway
Depending on which datasets the researcher requests, their application may be eligible for the Research Data Access Pathway, taking advantage of RDS’s agreement with Public Health Scotland to provide faster, simpler access to an expanding set of datasets through a fully digitised end-to-end application and governance process underpinned by the Five Safes Framework.
Currently, the scope of the Research Data Access Pathway covers projects that use data from nine of Public Health Scotland’s most frequently requested datasets.
How to enquire
After you submit your data access enquiry, a member of the eDRIS team will assess your project to determine if it suits the Research Data Access Pathway.
Applications following the Research Data Access Pathway will be evaluated by the RAS Approval Panel instead of a Public Benefit and Privacy Panel (PBPP). This aims to cut down on the time it takes for researchers to access their data while maintaining strict data security and public benefit criteria.
Applications that fall outside the scope of this pathway will instead progress through the PBPP Approval Pathway, supported by eDRIS.
