The West of Scotland Safe Haven, like the other Safe Havens in Scotland, provides an approved governance route and secure environment for trusted research partners to access and link to our anonymised NHS datasets.
Learn more by reading the Safe Haven User Guide
Research Affiliations
Researchers must be employed by, or have some professional affiliation with, an approved public sector institution, whilst industry partners are bound by data sharing agreements that stipulate the strict terms under which we may confer access to Safe Haven datasets.
Anyone accessing Safe Haven data will have completed an approved information governance course, will agree to follow the strict rules for using the Safe Haven datasets, and are bound by both their professional and ethical standards, and by existing UK and EU data protection laws.
Local Privacy and Advisory Committee
Routes to gain access to Safe Haven datasets are accredited by the Scottish Government. The West of Scotland Safe Haven has a Local Privacy and Advisory Committee (LPAC) of experienced NHS, academic and public stakeholders who scrutinise applications and offer guidance on data protection.
Datasets held by Safe Haven, depending on their origin, may have additional data controller safeguards in place, that will require further permissions to be sought before they can be linked and re-used.
Security
Safe Haven datasets and linked extracts are all secured according to NHS and University of Glasgow IT security standards. Data may not be removed or copied from the Safe Haven environments, and strict controls prevent unauthorised access to anyone other than approved Safe Haven users.
All data extracts are quality checked, and researchers may only ever remove limited and approved aggregated tabular data or charts from the Safe Haven to support publications.