For over 30 years, GP practices across the UK – from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – have contributed de-identified patient data to CPRD. GP practice sign-up to CPRD is endorsed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), NHS England and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). One in four practices in the UK contribute data to CPRD.
Advantages for GP practices joining CPRD:
- Contribute to evidence-based medicine
- Ensure your patient population is represented in research evidence informing clinical guidance and best practice
- Earn extra income for the practice by taking part in questionnaires and clinical studies
- Your patients can take part in clinical studies
- Receive practice-level prescribing and patient safety quality improvement (QI) reports including patient case-finding and national practice benchmarking
- Case reviews from QI reports, questionnaires and research contribute towards annual appraisals and revalidation
Joining is an easy, one-off process following which data automatically flows to CPRD.
Protecting patient data
Protecting the confidentiality of patient data is paramount. CPRD uses multiple steps to ensure the patient data we receive from GP practices is not identifiable and that the anonymised data we supply is used to benefit public health and improve patient care.
CPRD never collects patient identifiable information from GP practices or any other source. We obtain annual regulatory permission to supply anonymised data to researchers for approved public health studies. Find out more about how we protect the confidentiality of patient data.
More detail on our processing, the legal bases for that processing, and data subject rights is available at our Privacy Notice.
For more information, email gpnetwork@mhra.gov.uk or call 020 3080 7206.
Examples of how research using CPRD data benefits public health
What we do with information about you (GP practice information)
Download: Join CPRD's growing network of GP practices - A5 flyer (PDF, 330KB, 2 pages)