ORCHID: a TRE for primary care surveillance and research

Conference item : Poster

Timely access to large-scale, routinely updated primary care data is essential for public health surveillance and high-quality research, but requires robust safeguards for patient confidentiality, data quality, governance, and security. The Oxford Clinical Informatics Digital Hub (ORCHID) is a trusted research environment (TRE) providing curated primary care data from approximately 20 million patients across NHS England. It integrates three complementary platforms spanning public health surveillance, epidemiology, and prospective research. ORCHID-Surveillance (ORCHID-S) builds on more than 60 years of general practice surveillance, with over 2,000 GP practices contributing pseudonymised data to monitor infectious and other diseases. It provides intelligence to the UK Health Security Agency on influenza, RSV, COVID-19, and emerging outbreaks, and supports weekly reporting across 40 conditions. ORCHID-Epidemiology (ORCHID-E) provides double-pseudonymised patient-level clinical data for research into prevention, diagnosis, risk prediction, management, and outcomes. ORCHID-Trials & Prospective Studies (ORCHID-T/P), currently in development, will support study feasibility, recruitment planning, remote follow-up, and data linkage. Together, ORCHID provides secure, population-scale infrastructure connecting routine primary care data with surveillance, observational research, and prospective studies to accelerate evidence generation and improve population health.

Authors: Larke, LR

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford
• Publication date: 2026-08-24
• Event title: 2026 Oxford Summer Academy for the Social Science of Health
• Event location: Oxford, UK
• Event website: https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/events/oxford-university-summer-academy-for-the-social-science-of-health-innovation-2026
• Event start date: 2026-08-24
• Event end date: 2026-08-26
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-0zba8z465
• Language: English
• Subtype: Poster