PopData projects
After a Data Access Request (DAR) has been approved and contracts and agreements have been signed, Popdata’s Data Services Unit (DSU) will begin to prepare and provision the linked data in accordance with the approved DAR.
Each project is unique with Researchers requesting different data sets based on their research needs. At the data provisioning stage, the Data Access Unit (DAU) will explain the detailed data provisioning steps to Researchers based on their DAR approval and let Researchers know what to expect.
General overview of the data provisioning process
- Requests involving Core Data only
- PopData will give the authorized research team members access to the Core Data file via the Secure Research Environment (SRE).
- From the Core Data, Researchers will create the study population based on their approved DAR and create a ‘cut’ of the data for their analysis.
- PopData offers a study population creation service to Researchers. Researchers may prefer to only work with data subset to their study population only, instead of the population-base Core Data. PopData programmers can create the study population on behalf of Researchers and only release data for the study population. Researchers can contact the Data Access Unit to discuss their request and the costs associated with this service.
- Requests involving Non-Core Data
- PopData will prepare the Research Extract based on the project-specific approval. The Research Extract is custom-made. It will be created based on the detailed information in the approved DAR, including the cohort description, the data elements selected in the data checklist, and the date range specified in the request.
- A project-specific Research Extract will be released to the SRE, where authorized research team members can access the data and conduct analysis.
- Requests involving External Data
- An Information Sharing Agreement between PopData and the external data provider is normally required before data can be transferred between the organizations. PopData takes care of the agreement process and in most cases no action is required by Researchers.
- PopData will liaise with the external data provider (or the Researcher, when researcher-collected data is requested) and facilitate secure transfer of data from the provider to PopData.
- PopData will complete the linkage steps based on the linkage strategy in the approved DAR and work the external data provider to prepare the de-identified Research Extract.
- The Research Extract from PopData and the external data provider will be released to the SRE, where authorized research team members can access the data and conduct analysis.
HDPBC projects
After a Data Access Request (DAR) has been approved and contracts and agreements have been signed, HDPBC team will begin to prepare and provision the linked data in accordance with the approved DAR.
General overview of the data provisioning process
- Requests involving Core Data or Non-Core Data only
- Authorized research team members will receive access to the approved data via HDPBC Secure Environment.
- Researchers can create their own cohort or study population from the provisioned data as required. The approved data is always available for researchers to revise the cohort definition if needed throughout the duration of the project.
- Alternatively, researchers can request support from the HDPBC data and analysis team to build the cohort or study population from within the HDPBC Secure environment. The request can be submitted from within the secure desktop and no additional costs associated with this service.
- Requests involving External Data
- No additional Information Sharing Agreements are required if the external data provider is one of the health organisations. HDPBC has data contributor agreements in place that will allow sharing the data once the Research Agreement is in place.
- For data coming from non-participating external providers, please contact the DAU team at PopData for further information about agreements.
