The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC) nationally representative general practice sentinel network and database National primary care sentinel network: The RCGP RSC is nationally representative a network of over 500 general practices (GP) providing pseudonymised data for weekly surveillance of infectious diseases; our data are also available for quality improvement, research and education. Research based on the RCGP RSC data have been published in the best journals including BMJ, Lancet and Diabetes Care. Observational research The disease surveillance program is commissioned by Public Health England (PHE) and covers 37 infectious diseases including influenza. The RCGP RSC is a nationally representative population. The RCGP RSC and PHE, and its predecessor organizations have an over 50-year history of collaboration in influenza and respiratory disease surveillance and vaccine effectiveness studies. Each practice in the network is reported on by all 37 infectious disease on a weekly basis and are graphically compared with the network as a whole (on their own web based dashboard); this drives both quality improvement in clinical care and also raises data quality, with our practice liaison team providing timely support to practices requiring help with any disparities in their information. Thus, the observational researcher benefits from a data warehouse of patient level records going back decades with consistently coded data, able to support both longitudinal and cross-sectional study designs. Interventional research – ambition to be a hub for trials The RCGP RSC has produced a ‘Weekly Return’ of infections and respiratory disease since 1967, though over time it has expanded in terms of size, scope, sample collection and its capability with linking with other datasets. The databases systems at the RCGP RSC can process large numbers of patients’ data rapidly. The typical duration for generating the weekly report is under 4 hours. The weekly report reached its highest denominator of 3 million patients in last week of October 2019. The RCGP RSC hosts Workload Observatory (funded by NHS England) for GPs to understand trends of patients with multiple and more complex conditions. Using disease specific dashboards, general practices are provided weekly updated data quality indicators and comparison with other practices in the RCGP RSC network. This process allows practices to continuously improve their data quality and increase the quality of the RCGP RSC studies over time. We regularly administer questionnaires in our studies and are experienced in collecting samples from our network of practices. Practice level support from our dedicated practice liaison team is enhanced by our suite of dashboard technologies delivering rapid feedback to each of our practices. Hence combing our expertise in real world data analysis, high frequency of practice support and our continual development of internet-based practice level interaction, we are well placed for providing a low cost pragmatic trials platform for quality improvement studies or as a medicinal trials platform.

Clinical concepts are ontologically defined for clinical concepts as part of developing a study protocol. We have clinical and programming expertise to assist researchers in developing new ontologies for case finding and have a pool of existing ontologies and associated computer algorithms for extracting the data.

We have ongoing research across a wide range of medical areas, with international collaborations in child health, diabetes and influenza vaccination and have an extensive set of data extraction, processing and analytic procedures we have developed which are readily available to existing and new research collaborators.