Health Data Research Gateway joins ELIXIR-UK Services

The Health Data Research Gateway has been added to the portfolio of ELIXIR-UK Services. Led by Peter Harrison and Emily Jefferson at Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), the Gateway currently provides more than 43,000 annual users with a central portal for discovering and accessing health datasets across the UK, linking researchers to Trusted Research Environments (TREs) and secure compute environments.

Connecting UK health data to ELIXIR’s European ecosystem

The Gateway aligns with all five ELIXIR areas: Data, Compute, Interoperability, Tools and Training. It supports federated access to more than 1,100 datasets from over 100 data custodians, links datasets to publications, analysis scripts and software, and enables real-time cohort discovery across pseudonymised datasets to drastically reduce the time researchers spend locating relevant datasets.

Becoming an ELIXIR-UK Service means getting recognition for being technically robust, well-maintained, and widely adopted across the UK life sciences community.

Peter Harrison, Deputy CTO at HDR UK said: 

“Our aim is to simplify and accelerate the health data research landscape. Being recognised as an ELIXIR-UK Service amplifies our reach, ensures alignment with FAIR principles, and connects us to a broader European research community.”

Driving impact and long-term sustainability in health data research

The Gateway has 5,200 registered users and facilitates thousands of searches each month. Its outputs contribute to over 3,900 journal articles and preprints, cited more than 200,000 times. HDR UK’s long-term funding from a diversified portfolio of charity and government research funders ensures the service’s sustainability, with dedicated investment supporting the Gateway’s ongoing development and operation.