The principal role holders for the COVID-19 Data Research Hub are the RCU, CSO Statistican(s) and approved Researchers affiliated with registered Research Organisations which have been rigorously assessed and sanctioned for access to the RMF process. Information in individual data flows received by the CSO is safely receipted by the Office. Individual personal information will never be shared; only aggregate outputs will be accessible beyond a strictly delimited cohort of authorised CSO staff, whose specific role is to prepare pseudonymised data sets for use by approved personnel and researchers, safeguarding the security and confidentiality of administrative data gathered by the Office for statistical purposes. The underlying data, once received by the CSO, never leaves the Office and access to the pseudonymised data sets (RMFs) is possible only via a secure access-controlled portal, with full traceability.
Research projects will involve statistical and geospatial analysis of the agreed RMF datasets. No directly identifiable data relating to individuals will be made available to researchers, and no identifiable data can be made available to any stakeholders or other persons by the project team under Section 34 of the Statistics Act. RMFs are not statistical products. Unlike statistical products which relate to aggregated statistical analysis, RMFs are not published or made available to the general public.
The attached flowchart illustrates the path of an application for access to COVID-19 here. The researcher, in the centre of the five “swim lanes”, is responsible for driving the process. This is illustrated in the actions where the researcher submits their application to the Research Data Governance Board (RDGB), the sponsoring Institution’s Research Ethics Committee (REC) and the overarching Health Research Consent Declaration Committee (HRCDC). The RDGB will convene to assess the application against agreed criteria, before being in a position to confirm for the CSO that the application is for an eligible health research project and is in-scope as a COVID-19 project. Following a positive recommendation by the RDGB, and if the researcher provides evidence to the RDGB of approval from the REC and HRCDC, the application will be forwarded to the CSO for final approval using the RMF process. All of the necessary protocols and safeguards to ensure compliance and best practice under the Statistics Act, the Data Protection Act/Health Research Regulations are purposely integrated into this integrated, collaborative process.
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