Scottish Safe Haven Network's Federated Governance Pilot: Overview and Next Steps

This network is comprised of the National Safe Haven and four Regional Safe Havens, which offer secure access to health-data extracts for research. Each Safe Haven has their own individual application and review process. In recent years, there has been a growth in the number of projects seeking granular data from several Regional Safe Havens. The separate application processes have proven to be a barrier in allowing data from different regions to be combined within individual research projects.
 
In response to this, the Scottish Safe Haven Network explored the establishment of a federated system of governance across Scotland’s Regional Safe Havens. The main objective has been to enable a researcher to make a single application for access to regional data from multiple Safe Havens, with pseudonymised data extracts transferred to a single Trusted Research Environment for analyses. Involving leading NHS voices and building on existing data security protocols and research governance pathways, this collaborative project has simplified regional systems of governance, better enabling data from multiple health boards to be securely accessed for research with public benefit.
 
In this webinar, Federated Governance Pilot manager Susan Krueger will provide an overview of the pilot to date and introduce the anticipated next steps following the pilot work. A full agenda will be added to this description before the event. You can find out more and register here.