Our mission is to unite the UK’s health data to enable discoveries that improve people’s lives.

Our 20-year vision is for large scale data and advanced analytics to benefit every patient interaction, clinical trial, biomedical discovery and enhance public health.

We have achieved a huge amount since being founded in 2018. In our first five years, HDR UK has transformed the ability to harness large-scale data for research that delivers public benefit. We have enabled the application of cutting-edge data science approaches to address some of the most pressing health research challenges facing society. Despite this great progress, our job is far from done. The transformative potential of health data research is a long way from being realised in full.

As we move into our second five years 2023-28, we have refreshed our strategy.

It has been co-created with the HDR UK Community and sets out an ambitious and innovative programme to increase the scale, quality, speed and impact of insights derived from health data research.

The strategy focuses on three goals:

Accelerate Trustworthy Data Use

By implementing a national research data strategy and assembling infrastructure and services aligned to research and innovation needs.

Empower Researchers

By valuing people with diverse perspectives & skills committed to open and team science to advance scientific discoveries and deliver patient and public benefit.

Promote Partnerships

By building and maintaining critical partnerships, aligning incentives and reducing complexity across a fragmented landscape to streamline health data science.

A word from Andrew Morris, HDR UK Director:

“Over the past five years, HDR UK has made a substantial impact on health data across the UK and globally, especially in assembling the data architecture and delivering insights that supported the UK and global response to Covid-19.

 

“Our strategy and plans for 2023-28 are ambitious, exciting and will continue to contribute to the UK’s role as a global leader in science and innovation.”

 

Our work across these three integrated areas of activity will enable researchers to access data faster, more easily, securely and in a trustworthy way to deliver insights which improve people’s lives.