From enhanced metadata and developer capabilities to faster performance and improved accessibility, here’s what’s new since our last update.

Empowering data custodians

We’ve introduced new features to help data custodians share and manage their resources more effectively:

  • Custom widgets for external websites: Custodians can now create embeddable widgets to display live Gateway content on their own websites, ensuring researchers always see up-to-date information without custodians needing to maintain content in multiple places
  • Downloadable Data Access Requests: Custodians can now download submitted Data Access Requests and attachments directly from the platform, making offline review and internal processes faster and easier to manage
New feature! Creating a widget in the Gateway.

These features give custodians greater flexibility in how they present and manage their data.

Strengthening collaboration and community

Engaging with users continues to shape the Gateway’s development:

  • Our monthly roadmap drop-in sessions provide updates on current work and future plans, alongside opportunities for live feedback
  • Recent sessions have directly informed improvements across search, access, and usability

We’re grateful to everyone who has contributed their feedback so far.

Expanding reach beyond the Gateway

Gateway widgets in action on the Barts Health website.

New integrations are helping extend the visibility of Gateway content:

  • Gateway widgets are now being used by organisations such as Barts Health NHS Trust, allowing them to showcase their datasets directly on their own websites
  • This improves discoverability, reduces duplication, and helps researchers find datasets through trusted organisational websites, while ensuring the information is always accurate and up to date

Smarter metadata

Recent updates to the Gateway’s metadata schema (a structured framework to help custodians organise their metadata when onboarding it to the Gateway) are making data easier to organise, discover, and understand:

  • Improved structure: Dataset subtypes are now nested under dataset types, creating a more intuitive and logical filtering experience
  • Clearer terminology: Renaming ‘alternate identifier’ to ‘Dataset & BioSample alias’ and ‘data provider’ to ‘Data Custodian’ brings greater consistency across the platform
  • Stronger validation: Simplified URL formatting improves data quality during metadata onboarding
Custodians can now structure metadata more easily with dataset subtypes grouped under their parent dataset types. This example from the manual upload form shows ‘Health and disease’ as the dataset type, with ‘Mental health’ nested underneath as the subtype.

These changes make it easier for researchers to find the right datasets more quickly, while helping custodians upload cleaner, more consistent metadata with fewer errors.

Faster, more reliable performance

We’ve continued to improve the Gateway’s performance and stability behind the scenes:

  • Faster page load speeds for Data Custodian and Network pages, reducing waiting times and helping users move more quickly between information pages
  • Ongoing API and backend improvements, building on the rollout of API v2 to support future functionality
  • Over 30 technical fixes across recent releases, addressing performance, metadata handling, and API reliability

These improvements help ensure a smoother and more consistent experience for all users.

Improving accessibility and usability

Accessibility remains a key priority, with further enhancements to make the Gateway more inclusive:

  • Improved keyboard navigation, including clearer focus contrast
  • More structured and consistent content across pages
  • Enhanced support for screen readers

These improvements are making it easier for more people to confidently navigate and use the Gateway, regardless of how they access it. We’ve also published a new Accessibility Statement, outlining our commitment to ensuring the Gateway is usable for everyone.

Supporting better user experience

We’ve made several updates to improve how users interact with the platform day to day:

  • Support Centre improvements: A simplified ticketing process now clearly separates ‘Share feedback’ from ‘Get help or report an issue’, making it quicker and easier to get support
  • Customer satisfaction survey updates: The CSAT survey now appears quarterly and has been refined to make it quicker and easier to complete, allowing users to share feedback without disrupting their workflow
  • Cohort Discovery improvements: Updated landing pages and guidance make it clearer how to access the tool and reduce uncertainty during the application process, including validation for NHS Research SDE Network data

Summary

From stronger metadata and improved performance to new ways of sharing data and gathering feedback, the Gateway continues to become more robust, connected, and user focused. Every update is designed to make it easier for researchers to find and access data and enable custodians to manage and share their resources more effectively.

And as always, we’ll continue to listen, learn, and improve – with more updates to come soon!

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