National Health Service Central Register (NHSCR)

Before your application can be considered, you will need to provide evidence that your study has ethical approval and, wherever possible, informed consent from all the patients you wish to include in your study.

 

Confidentiality issues will affect the way you identify the patients you wish to include in your study.  The NHSCR takes its role of administering and protecting the sensitivity of health care data very seriously, working to the recommendations of the Caldicott Report and the Confidentiality and Security Advisory Group for Scotland - see the CSAGS website.

 

Informed patient consent is ideal for any medical research study requiring flagging or follow up using the NHSCR.  When studies involve large data sets this may be impractical.  In these cases permission may be given if the Committee concludes that the proposal represents bona fide health research, appropriate ethical approval has been obtained and there would be a disproportionate effort to obtain consent for research.  In addition, other approved privacy safeguards are applied when appropriate – especially that data are anonymised and/or aggregated to prevent any risk of indirect disclosure and that the researcher gives a written undertaking not to use any data provided to identify individuals.