National Health Service (NHS) data#
Last modified: 19 Oct 2026
Current status of NHS linkage across the four UK nations#
NHS England (data flowing): Participants are linked to their English health records (where permissions are in place).
NHS Wales (linkage approved): Extraction of participants’ Welsh health records has been approved by SAIL Databank (where permissions are in place). More details will follow in due course.
NHS Scotland (linkage conditionally approved): The flow of health data has been conditionally approved by the NHS Scotland Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care (HSC-PBPP). More details will follow in due course.
NHS Northern Ireland (discussions ongoing): Negotiations are ongoing with Health & Social Care Northern Ireland (HSCNI). More details will follow in due course.
The Available health linkages guide details the linked NHS records available for each LPS.
How UK LLC structures NHS dataset documentation#
UK LLC’s NHS documentation is organised by nation. Within each nation, researchers will find the following information (where available):
A summary of the datasets we hold for each nation
A summary of the restrictions to use of the datasets
A summary of the temporal coverage of the datasets
An explanation of how LPS participants are linked to their health records and how they can opt out
A summary of the various classification or coding systems used by each nation
Groupings guides that summarise datasets belonging to the same domain, e.g. mental health datasets, hospital datasets
Dataset guides that provide detailed information about individual datasets, e.g. NHS England’s Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) Outpatients.