Dundee’s Health Informatics Centre involved in pioneering programme to build and test new global capabilities for sensitive data research

The University of Dundee's trailblazing Health Informatics Centre, a leading Scottish health data research centre and one of only five Scottish Trusted Research Environments (TRE’s), will continue to play its part in shaping the future of sensitive data research following huge backing of a multi-institutional programme. 

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is investing £4.94 million into the £6.2 million TREvolution programme, which will enhance the capabilities of UK Trusted Research Environments (TREs). 

This initiative is part of DARE UK, a national programme involving the Universities of Dundee, Manchester, Nottingham, Swansea and West of England.  The programme aims to improve how sensitive data is accessed and used for research while maintaining strict security and privacy standards. It’s awarded under the DARE UK (Phase 2) Transformational Programme.

Having recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, Dundee’s Health Informatics Centre based at the School of Medicine at Ninewells Hospital, has long been at the forefront of delivering secure, anonymised data for health research. With this latest backing, Dundee will not only strengthen its expertise but also implement next-generation AI technologies to make data access faster and more efficient. This will build on previous successes, such as the GRAIMatter, TREEHOOSE, and SATRE projects, ensuring the university continues to lead the way in innovating secure health data infrastructure. 

This key milestone follows three years of dedicated work by Dr Christian Cole, Reader in Health Informatics and Academic Co-Director of Dundee Health Informatics Centre (HIC), to develop secure and effective health data research frameworks that ensure public voices are included in decision-making.

Dr Christian Cole, Co-Director of University of Dundee Health Informatics Centre said, “This is an exciting and ambitious programme which brings together several strands of research to deliver a common solution to increasing the scale of health data research on sensitive data in the UK. HIC’s and Dundee’s involvement is a recognition of our 20-years at the forefront of health data research in Scotland and the UK.”

DARE UK Interim Director, Professor Emily Jefferson, said, “TREvolution marks a step change in our efforts to transform the UK’s secure data research ecosystem. This important work will ensure that key capabilities - such as federated analysis and enhanced output checking supporting the training of AI models - are not just theoretical advancements but practical, real-world solutions that enhance the UK’s ability to do impactful research. 

“We look forward to working closely with the TREvolution team to advance these innovations and drive meaningful progress in how sensitive data is accessed and used for the public good."

The work programme will be delivered in collaboration with Research Data Scotland, Lancashire Teaching Hospital, Durham University, Lancaster University, University College London, University of Queensland, University of Basel and University of Cape Town.

TREvolution will address challenges associated with enhancing data access and analysis within TREs, secure environments where approved researchers can access sensitive data for research to benefit the public, such as national public health and population-level surveys.

TREs in the UK are internationally renowned for establishing the Five Safes framework, but they have some limitations for researchers. The manual application processes and disclosure checks make it challenging to keep up with today's scientific needs, like federated learning, analysis across sectors and research domains, and large-scale correlation studies.

TREvolution will address these challenges to evolve UK TRE capabilities across three themes:

• TRE reference architecture and implementations: Standardising UK TRE architectures to enable seamless interoperability.
• AI and semi-automated output checking: Enhancing research output review processes to ensure non-disclosure of personal information.
• Federated analysis: Enabling secure analysis of datasets stored in multiple TREs located across the UK.

This project builds on existing work done by the delivery partners, with experience across the themes, as well as the DARE UK (Phase 1) Driver Projects, which developed initial versions of some of the key components of TREvolution.

The funding call leading up to the award invited teams that delivered specific DARE UK Driver Projects to take the projects to the next stage of maturity. A single joint bid was submitted by TREvolution, a collaboration that builds on synergies between the Driver Projects teams to enhance the components, make them fully interoperable, and transition them into capabilities ready for use in UK TREs.

After an independent panel review process involving key experts and the public, £4,940,092 was awarded, being 80% of the full economic cost (£6,150,739) to support TREvolution from March 2025 to March 2027, ensuring that the outputs developed can be tested, refined, and adopted in real-world research settings.

TREvolution is the first of three initiatives under the DARE UK (Phase 2) Transformational Programme, advancing the further development and testing of core TRE components and capabilities developed in the first phase of the DARE UK programme.

Alongside TREvolution, further funding will be provided to support the early adoption of these capabilities by UK TREs and data services and to demonstrate their application through real-world research examples. The goal is to showcase the potential for a connected and efficient national network of secure data infrastructures.