NHS Information Centre

Additional Resources

The NHS Information Centre provides the following resources for researchers:

1. Trusted Data Linkage Service 
A data linkage service which provides researchers access to health care data whilst maintaining patient confidentiality.

2. Medical Research Information Service
The Medical Research Information Service provides health information to support research.  The service can link and manage cohorts, provide demographic and mortality information for patients, collect long term morbidity and mortality data on your behalf and match records.

3. Availability of Prescription Data by GP practices
Following a commitment from the Prime Minister earlier this year, prescription data by GP practice is now available freely available to download via the NHS Information Centre.  The first release covers September 2011 and monthly extracts will be released thereafter.

Information in the dataset includes:

• All prescribed and dispensed medicines (by chemical name), dressings and appliances (at section level) are listed for each GP practice.
• For each GP practice, the total number of items that were prescribed and then dispensed is shown.
• The total Net Ingredient Cost and the total Actual Cost of these items is shown.

Please note that this data does not list each individual prescription and does not contain any patient identifiable data.

About the NHS Information Centre
The NHS Information Centre was established in 2005 and provides information on the health and social care of people in England. Their aim is to ensure that this information is accessible, relevant and of a high quality to enable frontline NHS staff to deliver better care and empower patients to make proper choices about the services they receive.

To achieve these objectives the NHS Information Centre is responsible for the collection and administration of many datasets covering topics such as Health and Lifestyles, Hospital Care, Mental Health, Social Care and the NHS Workforce. Data is collected from NHS trusts, boards and agencies around the country, and is subsequently used by Government departments, health trusts and boards, local authorities and the Healthcare commission. Summaries are published in different formats.

The Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) datasets are the most commonly used for research. Separate datasets provide information about hospital admissions, outpatient attendances and accident & emergency cases. HES have their own dedicated website to provide details about dataset applications and production of summary statistics. Information for these datasets is collected by the Secondary Uses Service and forwarded to HES.

The ADLS will add new information and datasets to the NHS Information Centre section over time. Please keep checking back and you may also wish to receive notification of these updates by registering with us.