Invitation: CIPHA-OpenSAFELY Introduction Event

On 24th March, 2022 at 3:30-4:30pm, CIPHA and OpenSAFELY are hosting an introduction event for researchers in the North West of England who would like to work with CIPHA data using OpenSAFELY. If you would like to attend, please email Joanna Gilmore at Joanna.Gilmore@imerseyside.nhs.uk.

OpenSAFELY is a software platform that can be built within data centres for secure and transparent analysis of electronic health records data. It has been deployed in the secure data centres of TPP and EMIS to inform the response to COVID-19 through research and near real-time data monitoring. OpenSAFELY is now deployed in Graphnet in collaboration with CIPHA to create a Trusted Research Environment. CIPHA uses Graphnet’s population health management platform to inform regional response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is operated by 12 large care systems covering around 16.7 million patients in North West England and includes extensive health and social care data that is updated in near real-time.

Working in OpenSAFELY has numerous benefits: code is portable, so it can move between different environments where OpenSAFELY is implemented, and can be executed in multiple settings for “federated analytics”; all code is open by default, supporting reproducibility and efficiency; and all users can re-use the substantial codebase already created for dozens of other projects including deep curation of EHR records, dashboards for live reports, and high impact peer-reviewed studies. The list of ongoing and completed projects in the first wave of pilot users for OpenSAFELY can be found here.

The agenda for the introduction event is as follows:

• An introduction of OpenSAFELY from the OpenSAFELY team
• Presentations from external researchers who have used OpenSAFELY
• Technical descriptions of available data from the Graphnet team
• Discussion on the wider use of OpenSAFELY by the research community

Please feel free to share this event widely with those you think would be interested.