Nationwide electronic health records provide a rich, secure resource for studying the onset and progression of common and rare diseases. A team of clinicians and computer scientists at UCLH/UCL have pioneered an approach of open sharing of disease definitions using health records which are joined up across primary and secondary care. Initially the team used samples of 5 million people, but most recently it is at the vanguard of analyses in cohorts of 56 million people in England.

Defining diseases and other relevant phenotypes is fundamental for reproducible analysis of ‘big data’. The CALIBER platform which currently has about 2000 unique users per month gives researchers and healthcare professionals access to more than 700 different ‘phenotypes’ defined in national health record data across the patient journey. It provides a springboard for new developments in healthcare policy and practice.

Learn more about the work of CALIBER.