What is the Technology Ecosystem?  

There are many technology solutions available to support researchers, including software programmes, tools, scripts, pipelines, platforms, and code, but they are dispersed across many organisations and groups working within this space, and there’s often limited sharing and re-use of the solutions developed across the wider community. 

The technology ecosystem brings together all these individual components to align efforts and embed a collaborative approach to co-creating novel solutions that promote open science and encourage interoperability.  

Find out more here.  

Join our Slack channel

The Health Data Research Technology Slack channel is an online community space to connect technical teams across the health data ecosystem. Our aim is to foster the growth of the technology ecosystem to align efforts and collaborate on solutions that better support health data research.  

The Health Data Research Technology Community is a place to share ideas, work together on projects, seek feedback, access resources, and promote open and interoperable science.  Join the Slack channel here. 

Supporting technologists in health data research

Health Data Research UK is a proud signatory of the Technician Commitment, a university and research institution initiative which aims to ensure visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians working in higher education and research, across all disciplines. 

Find out more about how we are support technologists in our central team and wider community.  

DARE UK 

DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) is a programme funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to design and deliver a coordinated, connected, and trustworthy national network of secure data research infrastructures for better, faster, and safer research on cross-domain sensitive data for public good. The programme is funded through the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure programme which invests in new capabilities and in evolving existing infrastructures to support new communities of practice. 

DARE UK is a multi-phase programme delivered in partnership with Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), the national institute for health data science, and Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK), a UK-wide partnership transforming public sector data into research assets and policy-relevant insights, that oversee the management and delivery of the programme.  

The DARE UK programme was launched in July 2021 with funding for Phase 1 of £7.5 million until the end of March 2024, Phase 1 identified key gaps and set the direction for a connected national network of secure data research infrastructures. The programme is currently in Phase 2 with funding of up to £18.2 million until the end of March 2027, Phase 2 will bring together Trusted Research Environments (TREs) across the UK to test and build new capabilities for a connected national network of secure data research infrastructures. TREs are highly secure computing environments that provide remote access to sensitive data (such as education, tax and benefits, and health datasets) for approved researchers to generate new understanding for public benefit and to improve people’s lives. 

Working with partners, Phase 2 will start to assemble and test the digital infrastructure required for research to tackle complex societal challenges. As DARE UK’s previous work has shown, this can deliver new insights into challenges such as long-term unemployment, children’s mental health, childhood obesity and transforming the food economy. 

To find out more about DARE UK, click here.