Data Curation Skills for Sensitive Data
Make your voice heard - members are being sought for focus groups to explore transforming sensitive data curation. This is another step forward in a two-phase project to gather information on the skills and best practices needed for sensitive and effective data curation in TREs or sensitive data environments (SDEs).
HDR UK is working with partners across the sector, including the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh, University of Dundee, the Software Sustainability Institute at the University of Southampton, and Secure Data Access Professionals network based at the University of Essex to build the skills, knowledge, and capabilities required to support high-quality data curation in Trusted Research Environments (TREs).
Best Practice – Leading the Way
Good data curation is a cornerstone of health data research. It guarantees that sensitive data used is handled in ways that protect privacy and confidentiality – it is also critical to ensuring that research outputs are reliable and ethically sound.
HDR UK is taking a lead role in this project to gather information on the skills and best practices needed for sensitive and effective data curation within TREs or sensitive data environments (SDEs).
It will ultimately lead to the delivery of consistent, adaptable training to data professionals across TREs and SDEs.
UK-wide review
This UKRI-DRI initiative is a landscape review to discover the current skills levels and work practices of data curation teams across the country.
This involves:
- A UK-wide survey to gather input from data professionals in all four nations (now complete)
- Interviews with key informants across sectors
- Follow-up focus groups and qualitative analysis.
A final report will identify skills gaps and highlight the most critical.
“Making data research-ready is the foundation of trustworthy, impactful science. But curation isn’t done by just one type of person or team—it happens across a wide range of roles, disciplines, and geographies, each with their own ways of working. That’s why this project matters: we’re not just building skills, we’re creating a shared understanding shaped by the people who do the work. We want as many voices as possible to take part, so we can build something relevant to the whole sector,” Hollydawn Murray, HDR UK Head of Open Science, Research Culture & Impact
Our Vision
We want to establish a comprehensive understanding of sensitive data curation skills and needs across data professionals, and to support these needs by piloting evidence-based interventions that enhance data curation capabilities in TREs and SDEs.
Better Training For All
The current part of the project aims to help establish new approaches to training that will deliver world-class data curation as standard across the UK.
This will enhance the handling of sensitive health data, such as administrative, commercial, and condition-specific datasets.
It will be done by:
- creating new proof-of-concept training modules
- developing an open-source train the trainer toolkit
- nationwide testing and evaluation.
The initiative will produce freely available practical, scalable training resources that can be used across the NHS, academia, industry, and the wider health data sector.
We are working with stakeholders as diverse as the BHF Data Science Centre, DARE UK, the UK TRE Network, and Secure Data Access Professionals to develop these materials and ensure they meet the UK’s present and future needs.
