OpenSAFELY is a new secure analytics platform for electronic health records in the NHS, created to deliver urgent results during the global COVID-19 emergency. It is now successfully delivering analyses across more than 58 million patients’ full pseudonymised primary care NHS records, with more to follow shortly. All our analytic software is open for security review, scientific review, and re-use. OpenSAFELY uses a new model for enhanced security and timely access to data: we don’t transport large volumes of potentially disclosive pseudonymised patient data outside of the secure environments managed by the electronic health record software company; instead, trusted analysts can run large scale computation across near real-time pseudonymised patient records inside the data centre of the electronic health records software company. This pragmatic and secure approach allowed us to deliver our first analyses in just five weeks from project start.
Find out more about how OpenSAFELY works in this blog or read our papers and other blog posts, follow us on Twitter, or visit the website to find out more.
Latest OpenSAFELY blog posts
DMARD monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic
We describe some of our recent work investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on DMARD safety monitoring across >24 million patients’ records in England.
Read more about DMARD monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic →
OpenSAFELY research software advocate vacancy
We’re hiring a research software advocate and we think you’d be a good fit
Read more about OpenSAFELY research software advocate vacancy →
OpenSAFELY software engineering vacancies
We’re hiring software people and we’d love you to join us
Read more about OpenSAFELY software engineering vacancies →Latest OpenSAFELY papers
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Identification of patients undergoing chronic kidney replacement therapy in primary and secondary care data
Identification of people receiving chronic kidney replacement therapy using primary and secondary care records compared with gold standard registry data.
Status: Published
Categories
- OpenSAFELY
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The impact of COVID-19 on azathioprine, leflunomide and methotrexate monitoring, and factors associated with change in monitoring rate
This study investigated whether disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) safety monitoring was affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, with additional focus on effects within key health inequality groups.
Status: Published
Categories
- OpenSAFELY
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The impact of COVID-19 on medication reviews in English primary care
This study investigated whether the rate of medication reviews in primary care were affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, with breakdown by regional, clinical and demographic subgroups.
Status: Published
Categories
- OpenSAFELY
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Comparative safety and effectiveness of Pfizer BA.4-5 versus Sanofi during the spring 2023 COVID-19 booster vaccination programme in England
A comparison of the Pfizer BA.4-5 and Sanofi vaccines for protecting against Covid-19 during Spring 2023 booster programme in England
Status: Preprint
Categories
- OpenSAFELY