The iCARE SDE is a cloud-based, big data analytics platform sitting within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT) NHS infrastructure. This, combined with the iCARE Team’s robust method of data de-identification, make the Environment an incredibly secure platform. The fact that it can be accessed remotely using the Trust’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure means that researchers can perform their work remotely and are therefore not constrained by location.
(imperial.dcs@nhs.net)
The iCARE SDE enables clinicians, researchers and data scientists to access large-scale, highly curated databases for the purposes of research, clinical audit and service evaluation. The iCARE SDE enables advanced data analytics through a scalable virtual infrastructure supporting Azure Machine Learning, Python, R and STATA and a large variety of snowflake SQL tooling.
The main iCARE data model is a HRA REC approved database covering all routinely captured information from Imperial College Healthcare Trust (ICHT) Electronic Health Record and 39 linked (at the patient-level) clinical and non-clinical systems. It contains data for all patients from 2015 onwards and is updated weekly as a minimum, and close to real-time when required. It includes inpatient, outpatient, A&E, pathology, cancer, imaging treatments, e-prescribing, procedures, clinical notes, Consent, clinical trials, tissue bank samples, Patient safety and incidents, Patient experience, Staffing and environment data.
Data can also be linked to primary care data for the 2.8million population in Northwest London, HRA REC approved, Whole Systems Integrated Care (WSIC) hosted database and other health and social care providers when approved.
On a project-by-project basis the model can be expanded to curate and include new data (including multi-modality data), that is either captured routinely or through approved research and clinical trials. There are streamlined processes to approve and curate new data (imperial.dataaccessrequest@nhs.net) and data will always remain hosted in the SDE.
