DECOVID, a multi-centre research consortium, was founded in March 2020 by two United Kingdom (UK) National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trusts (comprising three acute care hospitals) and three research institutes/universities: University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB), University College London Hospitals (UCLH), University of Birmingham, University College London and The Alan Turing Institute. The original aim of DECOVID was to share harmonised electronic health record (EHR) data from UCLH and UHB to enable researchers affiliated with the DECOVID consortium to answer clinical questions to support the COVID-19 response.   ​​   ​​The DECOVID database has now been placed within the infrastructure of PIONEER, a Health Data Research (HDR) UK funded data hub that contains data from acute care providers, to make the DECOVID database accessible to external researchers not affiliated with the DECOVID consortium.

This highly granular dataset contains 256,804 spells and 165,414 hospitalised patients. The data includes demographics, serial physiological measurements, laboratory test results, medications, procedures, drugs, mortality and readmission.

Geography: UHB is one of the largest NHS Trusts in England, providing direct acute services & specialist care across four hospital sites, with 2.2 million patient episodes per year, 2750 beds & > 120 ITU bed capacity. UCLH provides first-class acute and specialist services in six hospitals in central London, seeing more than 1 million outpatient and 100,000 admissions per year. Both UHB and UCLH have fully electronic health records. Data has been harmonised using the OMOP data model. Data set availability: Data access is available via the PIONEER Hub for projects which will benefit the public or patients. This can be by developing a new understanding of disease, by providing insights into how to improve care, or by developing new models, tools, treatments, or care processes. Data access can be provided to NHS, academic, commercial, policy and third sector organisations. Applications from SMEs are welcome. There is a single data access process, with public oversight provided by our public review committee, the Data Trust Committee. Contact pioneer@uhb.nhs.uk or visit www.pioneerdatahub.co.uk for more details.

Available supplementary data: Matched controls; ambulance and community data. Unstructured data (images). We can provide the dataset in other common data models and can build synthetic data to meet bespoke requirements.

Available supplementary support: Analytics, model build, validation & refinement; A.I. support. Data partner support for ETL (extract, transform & load) processes. Bespoke and “off the shelf” Trusted Research Environment (TRE) build and run. Consultancy with clinical, patient & end-user and purchaser access/ support. Support for regulatory requirements. Cohort discovery. Data-driven trials and “fast screen” services to assess population size.