There are many benefits to be gained from the secure re-use of routinely-collected data and contributing data to SAIL Databank represents an investment for the future. By increasing the collections of data within SAIL Databank there exists a valuable data linkage resource that can be used to conduct vital health-related longitudinal research and evaluations.
The SAIL Databank team are experienced in supporting projects using external non-Welsh datasets (e.g. Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) from England) and offer assistance to researchers with the data acquisition process.
Data can be brought into SAIL Databank from any source and will benefit from its long established privacy protection and data management methodologies that have created a unique safe haven, data linkage and analysis environment. The high performance computing infrastructure ensures there are no constraints in storage capacity and efficiency of data processing.
If you wish to upload additional data to be linked with SAIL data solely for your own project, this is known as a project-specific dataset. The project owner is responsible for the dataset and for ensuring that there is no identifiable or high risk data contained within.
Access to such datasets is restricted with only approved people working on your project being given permission to use the dataset for analysis. In order to include new data from other sources, IGRP approval will be required prior to the data being uploaded into SAIL Databank.
The SAIL system includes the capability to load, anonymise and link your data to existing SAIL datasets. So once uploaded, you can use the secure SAIL Databank environment to access it in conjunction with other requested SAIL datasets to add breadth to your research.
Once your research project is completed all datasets are archived.
SAIL Databank houses and protects numerous valuable datasets that have been generously provided by a variety of organisations for use by research communities to benefit society. We work closely with data providers in accordance with their organisation’s due diligence and Governance arrangements and subject to a data sharing agreement.
Data can be introduced into SAIL and made available for research as one of two types:
These datasets can be made available for linkage via the standard application process
These datasets can be made available for linkage subject to approval from the data provider in addition to the standard application process
Once the data sharing agreement has been signed, data providers can start to upload their own data by following the steps in the video below.
How Do I Upload My Data? How Do I Apply To Upload My Data?How to apply to upload data into SAIL Databank:
description Data Acquisition Request Form
description New Dataset Scoping Form
Following acquisition approval:
description Data Sharing Agreement
More information about our methods of transferring data and making data about a person anonymous:
description Person-level Export File Structure & Data Transfer
description Address-level Export File Structure & Data Transfer