Data

CPRD offers high quality data and world-leading research services to facilitate your public health research needs.

Primary care and linked data to address public health research

CPRD offers a quality-assured source of longitudinal and representative, real-time UK population health data, for epidemiological and pharmacoepidemiological research. CPRD data are used worldwide by regulators, academic researchers and the life science industry for observational and electronic healthcare record (EHR) enabled interventional public health studies. Over 3,500 peer-reviewed publications informing clinical and drug safety guidelines and best practice have been published to date.

CPRD data are sourced from a UK-wide network of over 2,000 primary care practices and include 60 million patients of which 18 million are currently registered active patients with at least 20 years of follow-up for 25% of the patients. 

The CPRD database contains coded and anonymised EHR data from primary care practices capturing information on:

  • Demographic characteristics
  • Diagnoses and symptoms
  • Drug exposures
  • Vaccination history
  • Laboratory tests
  • Referrals to hospital and specialist care 

Find out more about primary care data 

CPRD provides routine data linkages between primary care and other health-related patient datasets including: 

  • Hospital care (Accident and Emergency; Inpatient; Outpatient; Imaging)
  • Death registry
  • Cancer registry and treatment
  • Mental health services
  • Socio-economic measures
  • Mother-baby link and pregnancy register algorithms 

Find out more about CPRD linked data

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