MEDICINES AND HEALTHCARE PRODUCTS REGULATORY AGENCY (MHRA): Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) is a governmental centre, jointly funded by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the National Institute for

Data-sharing agreement from NHS Digital registers of approved data releases, 2014–2019. Evidence status: source reported.

Organisation: MEDICINES AND HEALTHCARE PRODUCTS REGULATORY AGENCY (MHRA)
Source reference: DARS-NIC-08477-H7S0Z-v0.3
Jurisdiction: England
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0, subject to NHS England terms and exclusions

Register reference: DARS-NIC-08477-H7S0Z-v0.3
Agreement period: not published to no end date published
For commercial purposes (as marked in the register): Not stated
Release files listed by NHS England: 326

Data approved

Bridge file: Hospital Episode Statistics to Mental Health Minimum Data Set
Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care
Patient Reported Outcome Measures (Linkable to HES)
Office for National Statistics Mortality Data
Hospital Episode Statistics Accident and Emergency
Hospital Episode Statistics Critical Care
Diagnostic Imaging Dataset
Hospital Episode Statistics Outpatients
Mental Health Minimum Data Set
Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Data Set

Objective, as published

Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) is a governmental centre, jointly funded by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the remit of which is to enable medical research through sharing pseudonymised clinical data. The CPRD in-house teams add value to the data sources through building tools and methodologies, conducting data characterisation studies and facilitating verification and validation services. CPRD wishes to be in position to share with its customers linked pseudonymised data so they can undertake approved research projects looking to improve public health and patient outcomes. Researchers using CPRD data can undertake, among others, drug safety, disease epidemiology, healthcare utilisation and health economics and outcomes studies that often directly inform clinical guidelines or regulatory decisions. An additional incentive is to provide pseudonymised data in the context of clinical drug safety or randomised controlled trials that can help build a more complete picture for the enrolled patients and increase transparency and efficiency of study results and design. These linkages will open the door to a large number of research questions, given that the granularity and detail of this information is not found in primary care data alone. Primary care data, in the main, forms the core of the CPRD service and linkage to other data sets. Each individual practice has the control over the…

Expected benefits, as published

As evidenced by existing studies using linked data to the CPRD primary care database (on an ongoing basis), results derived from publications undertaken by CPRD customers have frequently impacted public health and informed clinical guidelines. Notable examples and relevant publications include the following: A CPRD study on the prevalence and management of atrial fibrillation (AF) in the general population led to initiatives to improve the care of women and older people with AF [1]. The recently published and very important NICE guidance consultation document “Suspected cancer: Recognition of suspected cancer in children, young people and adults” derived its evidence for management, investigation and referral for most of the cancers discussed largely from GPRD and CPRD studies and, for so…

Source: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/2019/http://content.digital.nhs.uk/media/24614/Release-Register-March---May-2017/xls/Release_Register__March_-_May_20171.xlsx. Captured 2026-10-30.

Limitations: Agreement as recorded in an NHS Digital register of approved data releases (2014–2019), retrieved from the UK Government Web Archive. That register lists releases made in its period and the agreement's purpose statement as it then stood; it gives no agreement dates, and the agreement may have changed since. Imported only where a paper quotes a reference no current register holds.