Agenda

11.00-11.05 Carole Morris – Head of Data and Modelling Services

Carole Morris will introduce Public Health Scotland

11.05 – 11.35 James Watson – Principal Information Development Manager

The provision of secure access to data for research is crucial to making data work for the public benefit. One of the first steps in the process requires researchers to engage with data providers. This is to understand whether there are enough cases and controls in the data to answer their specific research questions. This could be at the grant writing stage (where they need to provide such evidence to funding panels) or before drafting a data governance application. Asking such questions is called cohort discovery or feasibility analysis. A researcher may alter their question multiple times until a suitable cohort is discovered. Each time they do so, it is often the case that a member of the support team must write bespoke queries across multiple databases to determine the number of people who meet the search criteria. Each iteration can take significant effort and time for researchers and support teams. Such cohort discovery/feasibility analysis is not cost-recoverable as this work is before researchers obtain funding for their research study.

The development of the Cohort Discovery Tool will automate much of this process. This will allow researchers to directly query the number of cases and controls which are available within the Public Health Scotland (PHS) and other datasets as they become available. This webinar will demonstrate the tool in its current release and allow a discussion of potential uses and developments for the future.

11.35 – 11.50 Q&A

———————–

Please note that this session will be recorded and shared online.