About OPCRD

Optimum Patient Care Research Database (OPCRD) is a real-world, longitudinal, research database that provides anonymised data to support scientific, medical, public health and exploratory research. OPCRD is established, funded and maintained by Optimum Patient Care Limited (OPC) – which is a not-for-profit social enterprise that has been providing quality improvement programmes and research support services to general practices across the UK since 2005.

Key Features of OPCRD

OPCRD has been purposefully designed to facilitate real-world data collection and address the growing demand for observational and pragmatic medical research, both in the UK and internationally. Data held in OPCRD is representative of routine clinical care and thus enables the study of ‘real-world’ effectiveness and health care utilisation patterns for chronic health conditions.

OPCRD unique qualities which set it apart from other research data resources: • De-identified electronic medical records of more than 24.8 million patients • OPCRD covers all major UK primary care clinical systems • OPCRD covers approximately 35% of the UK population • One of the biggest primary care research networks in the world, with over 1,175 practices • Linked patient reported outcomes for over 68,000 patients including Covid-19 patient reported data • Linkage to secondary care data sources including Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)

Data Available in OPCRD

OPCRD has received data contributions from over 1,175 practices and currently holds de-identified research ready data for over 24.8 million patients or data subjects. This includes longitudinal primary care patient data and any data relevant to the management of patients in primary care, and thus covers all conditions. The data is derived from both electronic health records (EHR) data and patient reported data from patient questionnaires delivered as part of quality improvement. OPCRD currently holds over 68,000 patient reported questionnaire data on Covid-19, asthma, COPD and rare diseases.

Approvals and Governance

OPCRD has NHS research ethics committee (REC) approval to provide anonymised data for scientific and medical research since 2010, with its most recent approval in 2020 (NHS HRA REC ref: 20/EM/0148). OPCRD is governed by the Anonymised Data Ethics and Protocols Transparency committee (ADEPT). All research conducted using anonymised data from OPCRD must gain prior approval from ADEPT. Proceeds from OPCRD data access fees and detailed feasibility assessments are re-invested into OPC services for the continued free provision of patient quality improvement programmes for contributing practices and patients.

For more information on OPCRD please visit: https://opcrd.co.uk/