SAFEHR is a cross UCLH and UCL initiative to provide multimodal data extraction and access for hospital data for research. Please see our full website for more information.

SAFEHR (Secure Anonymised Fair Electronic Health Records, pronounced ‘safer’), is a research collaborative that brings together digital, data and technology teams from UCLH and UCL. 

We facilitate streamlined data access and extraction, particularly for multimodal datasets, bringing together imaging and structured data with free text.

We are supported in this by our patient and public Data Trust Committee, by UCLH’s EHRS teams, and by Advanced Research Computing (ARC) at UCL.

Our capabilities

  • We link multimodal UCLH data

  • We run DAP-R / DAP-R Express, devolved HRA approval for anonymised data studies at UCL/H.

  • PIXL, an advanced imaging pipeline which allows streamlined access to structured, unstructured, and imaging data, including MRI and CT scans.

  • CogStack, a software running as a service to facilitate free-text processing of documents (e.g. GP and referral letters, medical reports), information extraction and information retrieval using different natural language processing tools.

  • OMOP – ES, OMOP Extraction System is a data extraction pipeline that we designed to easily allow new types of data to be incorporated, enforce high quality mapping and be portable to other EPIC sites.

  • EMAP, a unique, real-time shadow of the EHRS that permits development and deployment of machine learning for health.

  • Data Access for Education, a major initiative in which approved educations and students will have access to UCLH’s anonymised patient database to improve healthcare teaching and training. 

  • NIHR Health Informatics Collaborative (HIC), a collaboration between different BRCs, bringing together clinical, scientific and informatics expertise at each trust to improve the quality and availability of patient information.

  • We’ve developed a number of policies to advise on the generation and governance of synthetic data, using data for education, on how to anonymise data safely, and more.

If you’d like to use UCLH data for research, find out more about what we can do, or browse what we’ve worked on in the past, please visit our website!