Several projects and themes from TREvolution were represented at the UK’s leading health data science conference in Glasgow last month.
Health Data Research UK Conference 2025, held on 15 and 16 October, was a hybrid event to commemorate progress and bring people together to accelerate the trustworthy use of health data for public benefit. Spanning multiple themes, across posters, plenary and panel talks, this event was dedicated to celebrating how health data science can improve people’s lives.
TREvolution is a programme of work shaping the future of sensitive data research in the UK by promoting shared standards and building trustworthy innovations to make research faster and more effective for the public good.
Speakers from TREvolution at HDR UK annual conference included:
- Vishnu Vardhan Chandrabalan (Lancaster University and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) presented on ‘Unified infrastructure and governance for direct care intelligence, population health and research’
- Simon Li (University of Dundee) talked about ‘A standard architecture for TREs: why is it important in a federated world?’ which is a key component of the TREvolution programme through the SATRE (Standard Architecture for Trusted Research Environments) project.
- Simon Thompson (University of Swansea) spoke about ‘Challenges of supporting artificial intelligence (AI) projects within Trusted Research Environments’
Simon Li, Senior Research Infrastructure Engineer, said: “I was delighted to present at this year’s HDR UK conference. I hope TREvolution will demonstrate that Trusted Research Environments across the UK are committed to working together to make the best use of sensitive data to benefit the public. There’s a lot to be gained from safely analysing datasets from multiple TREs, but this needs to be done safely and securely. TREvolution will hopefully demonstrate to the public that this is possible.”
Public involvement and engagement is at the heart of TREvolution. At the HDR UK annual conference, public involvement and engagement work was represented in a poster ‘Integrating the voices of seldom-heard communities into development of Trusted Research Environments’. This poster highlights that TREvolution is engaging with people from underserved communities to ensure that their perspectives are heard and their insights shape and inform the programme’s work.
TREvolution was also featured in another poster ‘Practical guide to Artificial Intelligence risks and mitigations for Trusted Research Environments and the RELEASE-AI framework’. This poster presented a comprehensive guide to the types of risks different AI methods pose in terms of disclosure and privacy, with a view to preventing release of personal and sensitive data.
First author of the poster, Alba Crespi Boixader, said: “TREvolution is shaping the way on how research is being done with sensitive and personal data. By providing robust tools and comprehensive guidelines, TREvolution will not only help to speed up and improve the quality of research but also enhance transparency and public trust.”
TREvolution is funded by UKRI, via DARE UK. Professor Emily Jefferson, Interim Director for DARE UK, opened Day 2 of the conference with a welcome address and brief reflection on the vision of DARE UK, reaffirming their commitment to delivering a trustworthy and cohesive national network of secure data infrastructures for public benefit.
Technical Programme Manager for TREvolution, Gordon Milligan, was part of the programming committee for the conference. Reflecting on the event, he said: “There are common problems that need a UK-wide resolution to accelerate research and utilise the rich data we collect in the UK.
“TREvolution is an important programme to help move the dial and make federated research projects to enable large scale research but also provide improvements to the processes TREs use to make life easier for day-to-day operations around offering a TRE as a service.
“The HDR UK conference provided an excellent networking opportunity and chance to learn about a wide variety of research work going on across the UK and beyond which provides ideas for future work and collaboration.”
