In April this year, the UK Government announced a new chapter in the future of UK research: a £600 million investment to establish a Health Data Research Service (HDRS).

Backed by Wellcome and central to the Life Sciences Sector Plan as part of the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, the investment aims to streamline access to NHS datasets in England through a secure, single access point, addressing a long-standing challenge for researchers across the UK. 

This is a significant step forward, yet ambition alone won’t be enough. If the HDRS is to truly transform healthcare, it needs to be built on a fundamental principle: federation. This technical term really boils down to something simple and powerful: connecting what already works and making it work together safely and securely. 

Connecting the dots and making it work 

Health data currently lives in dozens of safe and secure silos across the UK known as Trusted Research Environments (TREs) or Secure Data Environments (SDEs). Each of these islands of data holds vital information, but operates largely independently, with its own robust privacy protection and safeguards in place.  The HDRS should avoid falling into the trap of creating a new mega island of data which centralises all sensitive health data, creating a single point of failure, a bottleneck for innovation and a serious challenge to public trust. 

Instead, the answer lies in federation: building secure bridges between these existing islands. In some cases, this allows approved researchers to perform remote analysis of vast, diverse datasets located across the UK without ever moving sensitive data from their home island. Researchers send a sealed parcel of analysis code across each bridge, where it runs safely within the local TRE/SDE, returning with only anonymised and aggregated insights. 

For other studies that require it, researchers can deploy a guarded data convoy, under strict governance from one accredited TRE/SDE to another within the secure network. Every transfer is pre-approved, only holds de-identified data, and is tracked end-to-end and protected by rigorous controls as it crosses these secure bridges. Some studies can combine the strengths of both approaches. All of these approaches ensure that data custodians retain full oversight and that personal information is kept secure, while unleashing the collective power of millions of records. 

Secure bridges and guarded data convoys alone aren’t enough. Each environment needs to speak the same languages to use shared standards for how they format data, manage access and audit activity. This provides appropriate levels of trust between services, users, health professionals, patients, and the public. Without this, safe and trustworthy data sharing becomes messy, inconsistent and slow. 

From blueprint to reality: Powering the vision through TREvolution 

Working with our partners, we’re investigating, developing and testing the tools and standards that could readily form components of a scalable and sustainable HDRS. The DARE UK TREvolution project, funded by UKRI, is standardising how TREs/SDEs operate across the country. We’re developing and perfecting the standards and utilising tools needed for federated analysis, and we‘re building semi-automated output checking systems to speed up the process of ensuring that research findings never inadvertently reveal patient identities — crucial for privacy and scalability. 

This work isn’t happening in isolation. TREvolution brings together key experts, leaders, and members of the public to shape the infrastructure and open standards needed to make secure, efficient data access a reality across the UK.  Alongside TREvolution, several early adopter projects funded by UKRI are piloting these capabilities in more than 10 live data environments, including five NHS sub-national SDEs in England, the national TRE in Wales and the longstanding UK Data Service. 

These projects are working collaboratively to deliver real-world evidence of what’s possible, demonstrating how the HDRS can move faster and go further with the standards, tools, and partnerships enabled by DARE UK. 

Long-term success will demand commitment to infrastructure, governance, technical standards, changes in culture, and, most importantly, the ongoing demonstration of trustworthiness to patients and the public. 

For the HDRS, the next steps must be decisive. At a minimum, they should: 

  • Embed federation as a core design principle from day one
  • Mandate interoperability, with open, shared standards across partners
  • Scale up existing infrastructure, building on what’s already working
  • Put public and patient involvement at the heart, with transparency and accountability baked in. 

A collective vision — and recognising the opportunity 

The HDRS is a major investment in health, but its principles apply far beyond. As discussions about a National Data Library (NDL) advance, federation must guide our approach to a wider, cross-domain national data research infrastructure. One that supports not only health research but also works across education, environment, social welfare, and many others, supporting open standards-based global research for public benefit.  

This vision, articulated in our submission to the Wellcome technical white paper challenge, outlines a potential model for an NDL: a system providing trusted, secure access to sensitive public data across all domains, grounded in strong governance and meaningful public involvement. By embedding federation as a core HDRS principle, we can ensure a seamless future integration, maximising the long-term value of the HDRS investment and preventing the creation of new data silos.   

Finally, and critically, modern science is international. An HDRS built and assembled on the principle of federation will open the door to UK participation in international data infrastructure, with progress already being made in that direction in Europe. The European Network of Trusted Research Environments (EOSC-ENTRUST) published the first version of its European TRE network blueprint, informed by the DARE UK Federated Architecture Blueprint, with plans to develop it further this year. 

As the UK embarks on this landmark investment, the question isn’t just how the HDRS will be built, but who will help assemble it. The challenge is complex and must be tackled in partnership with entities across the health data ecosystem and beyond, but the opportunity to deliver benefits for patients and the public is transformational.  

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