Coming soon: the Scottish Safe Haven Charter 2.0
10 April 2024
Eilidh Guthrie, Partnerships Officer and Jenny Johnston, Project Manager (Scottish Safe Haven Charter Refresh) give us an overview of recent work on the Scottish Safe Haven Charter.
Research Data Scotland (RDS) is working with Scotland's National and four Regional Safe Havens to realise a federated network, through simplifying and streamlining common systems, processes and services.
The Scottish Safe Haven Network connects the organisations behind Scotland's secure data infrastructure. The network was established by the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office (CSO) and is now supported by Research Data Scotland (RDS), with the aim of improving systems for accessing data for research in line with the Scottish Government's strategy for health and social care.
Members of the Scottish Safe Haven network operate under the Safe Haven Charter, which sets out agreed standards and principles for secure data access for research across Scotland. This facilitates collaborative innovation and improvements in access to health, social care and administrative data to further enable beneficial research.
Future investment in the federation of technology, governance and administration across the Safe Haven Network will significantly improve Scotland's collective data research capabilities. A federated network will allow data from two or more Safe Havens to be used securely and efficiently, enabling important research for the public benefit of Scotland.
The Scottish Safe Haven Steering Group comprises the following organisations:
Representatives of the Scottish Safe Haven Network come together to form the Scottish Safe Haven Steering Group, which is chaired by RDS. The remit of the Steering Group is to lead, develop and innovate projects that deliver federation of data from the Regional Safe Havens, and to align objectives and activities across the Safe Havens.
The group meets monthly, usually online, on the last Monday of each month. We often have a relevant external speaker at meetings.
Research Data Scotland created the Systems Development Fund to support the development of shared standards of best practice across the Regional Safe Havens. Round 1 of the fund saw over £760,000 awarded to 5 projects, which successfully developed shared standards and best practice in areas such as synthetic health data, the de-identification of free text in health records, as well the safe use of machine learning.
A successful Showcase event was held in March 2024, where the learnings from these projects was shared with key stakeholders across Scotland and the UK. Details of these projects can be found in the following news article: Five projects awarded to Scottish Regional Safe Havens.
A second round of the Systems Development Fund ran in 2023. This round looked to fund Regional Safe Haven projects that delivered according to the following five priorities:
In response to this call, the Regional Safe Havens proposed a collaborative project to assess compliance with and adopt common governance standards for Trusted Research Environments outlined in the SATRE (Standardised Architecture for Trusted Research Environments) specification. SATRE was funded as a DARE UK Driver Project in 2023 and aims to bring greater consistency to the Regional Safe Havens through a shared evaluation framework and common standards across the network. The project is due to be completed by the end of 2024.
Learn more about the projects supported by the Systems Development Fund in 2023/4
In 2023, DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) announced funding for five Driver Projects aiming to transform sensitive data research in the UK. These projects aimed to help lay the foundations for a UK-wide network that links together existing trusted research environments.
The Scottish Safe Havens were involved in all five of these projects, with RDS leading public engagement on two of the projects. Head to the DARE UK Driver Project page to learn more.
The Scottish Safe Haven Network is working on a number of activities, including:
The Scottish Safe Havens are accredited to ISO27001 or equivalent standard for information security management systems.
For more information, please contact Eilidh Guthrie, Partnerships Officer.
10 April 2024
Eilidh Guthrie, Partnerships Officer and Jenny Johnston, Project Manager (Scottish Safe Haven Charter Refresh) give us an overview of recent work on the Scottish Safe Haven Charter.
27 March 2024
This guest blog authored by Dr Charlie Mayor of West of Scotland Safe Haven is part of a series spotlighting the work of Scotland’s Safe Havens, also known as Trusted Research Environments.
26 March 2024
This guest blog authored by Dr Laura Ward of the Health Informatics Centre (HIC) is part of a series spotlighting the work of Scotland’s Safe Havens, also known as Trusted Research Environments.