Led by Research Data Scotland (RDS), the Scottish Safe Haven Network connects the organisations behind Scotland's secure data infrastructure.
The Scottish Safe Haven Network (SSHN) is a collaboration between the organisations behind Scotland’s secure data infrastructure.
Led by Research Data Scotland (RDS), the Network seeks to continually improve Scotland’s research landscape. This includes standardising the way data is held and improving data access systems in line with the Scottish Government’s strategy for health and social care.
Working with regional NHS Board partners, the network contributes expertise and experience to support research across Scotland.
Members of the SSHN operate under the Safe Haven Charter, which sets out agreed standards and principles for secure data access for research across Scotland. This facilitates collaborative innovation and improvements in access to health, social care and administrative data to further enable beneficial research.
The Scottish Safe Haven Network is comprised of Scotland's National Safe Haven and four Regional Safe Havens. Each Safe Haven enables secure access to data for a different area of Scotland, alongside specialist research services.
National-level data
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.
Region: Grampian
The Grampian Data Safe Haven (DaSH) was established by the University of Aberdeen and NHS Grampian, and enables secure access to data covering the Grampian and Scottish population.
Region: Edinburgh and South-East Scotland
Developed in partnership by the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian, DataLoch supports access to health and social care data for the South-East Scotland region.
Region: Fife and Tayside
The Health Informatics Centre (HIC) operates as a Trusted Research Environment for the Scottish Government, NHS Fife and NHS Tayside health board regions.
Region: Greater Glasgow and Clyde
The West of Scotland Safe Haven is a collaboration between NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Research and Innovation, and the University of Glasgow, enabling secure data access covering the Greater Glasgow and Clyde region.
The Scottish Safe Havens are accredited to ISO27001 or equivalent standard for information security management systems.
The six members of the SSHN are:
Research Data Scotland
eDRIS at Public Health Scotland
DaSH (Grampian Data Safe Haven)
DataLoch
Health Informatics Centre (HIC)
West of Scotland Safe Haven
For more information about the SSHN, please contact Jen Muir, Scottish Safe Haven Network Manager.
Collectively, representatives of the SSHN form the Scottish Safe Haven Steering Group, which is chaired by RDS. The remit of the Steering Group is to lead, develop and innovate projects that deliver federation of data from the Regional Safe Havens, and to align objectives and activities across the Safe Havens.
Discover some of our recent impact below:
Research using de-identified data has the potential to generate insights that improve - and save - lives. However, research that combines data from several different regional health boards has been restricted by distinct application and approval processes between Regional Safe Havens. Researchers have had to submit separate applications to each region, making research slower, more expensive and less impactful.
The Federated Governance project piloted the establishment of a secure, federated system of governance across Regional Safe Havens, enabling researchers to go to any one of the four Regional Safe Havens to access data from multiple health boards.
Watch our webinar exploring the Federated Governance project
The Safe Haven Charter sets out the principles and standards for the SSHN to support the use of data to enable research and innovation across Scotland providing a trusted, secure framework for researchers accessing health data in a controlled and ethical way.
In March 2025, the SSHN published a refreshed Charter - the first major update since 2015 - to better reflect the Safe Havens’ collective focus on transparency, security, and public benefit.
The refreshed Charter included a refined set of five clear principles, streamlined from the original seven, designed to ensure clarity, foster greater consistency across the SSHN, and strengthen public confidence in how data is used to support research that benefits patients and the wider population.
Following a successful funding period in 2022-23, a second round of the Systems Development Fund ran in 2023. This round funded Regional Safe Haven projects that delivered work towards the following five priorities:
Support joint working/federalisation across all the Regional Safe Havens, as outlined in the Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Data Strategy.
Pilot or support specialisation in a particular Regional Safe Haven, or expand something that is happening in one safe haven across others.
Support working between national and regional Safe Havens.
Support developments that align with those deliverables that mention the data safe havens in the research and innovation chapter of the Health and Social Care Data Strategy.
Filling in the geographical gaps which exist between the four regional safe havens, and their respective health boards.
In response to this call, the Regional Safe Havens proposed a collaborative project to assess compliance with and adopt common governance standards for Trusted Research Environments outlined in the SATRE (Standardised Architecture for Trusted Research Environments) specification.
SATRE was funded as a DARE UK Driver Project in 2023 and aims to bring greater consistency to the Regional Safe Havens through a shared evaluation framework and common standards across the network.
Learn more about the projects supported by the Systems Development Fund in 2023-24
RDS created the Systems Development Fund to support the development of shared standards of best practice across the Scottish Regional Safe Havens.
Round 1 of the fund saw over £760,000 awarded to 5 projects from across the Regional Safe Havens, which successfully developed shared standards and best practice in areas such as synthetic health data, the de-identification of free text in health records, as well the safe use of machine learning.
In March 2024, RDS hosted a showcase event where learnings from these projects were shared with key stakeholders across Scotland and the UK.
Find out more about the projects supported by the Systems Development Fund in 2022-23
In 2023, DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) announced funding for five Driver Projects aiming to transform sensitive data research in the UK. These projects aimed to help lay the foundations for a UK-wide network that links together existing trusted research environments.
The Scottish Safe Havens were involved in all five of these projects, with RDS leading public engagement on two of the projects.
Head to the DARE UK Driver Projects page to learn more.
The Scottish Safe Haven Network continues to champion, support and improve Scotland's data for research landscape, has worked on a number of other activities including:
Supporting 'Data Saves Lives' and the Five Safes framework for public benefit and to enable efficient research.
Inputting into industrial use of data via the 'Industry access to public sector data: Policy on data access, Scottish Government' review.
A project around how to communicate consistency and security regarding the Safe Havens in Scotland, and advocate for the key role Safe Havens play in the data system.
Calling for greater investment in Trusted Research Environments to enable better connectivity between Scotland's data infrastructure and elsewhere in the UK.
Reviewing information governance and related processes.
Coordinating other activities, such as collectively responding to DARE UK and other funding calls.
30 April 2026
Scottish Regional Safe Havens are involved in four of eight research projects which have been awarded £3.52 million in funding from the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure Fund.
27 November 2025
Watch a recording of our webinar exploring the Federated Governance pilot run by the Scottish Safe Haven Network, a collaboration of the organisations behind Scotland’s secure data infrastructure.
27 March 2025
The Safe Haven Charter, which underpins the collaborative work of Scotland’s technical environments that enable researchers to securely access and analyse sensitive data, has been updated for the first time since 2015.
