Optimum Patient Care Research Database (OPCRD) V1.0
Research type
Research Database
IRAS ID
356524
Contact name
Adam Marsh
Contact email
Research summary
Optimum Patient Care Research Database (OPCRD)
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/EM/0110
Date of REC Opinion
11 Jun 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion
Data collection arrangements
Optimum Patient Care Research Database (OPCRD) is a real-world, longitudinal, research database that provides anonymised data to support scientific, medical, public health and exploratory research. OPCRD also supports the conduct feasibility assessments and anonymous data insights. OPCRD is maintained by Optimum Patient Care, a not-for-profit social enterprise that provides free quality improvement programmes and research support services to practices since 2005.
OPCRD holds deidentified data for over 28 million patients from over 1,180 practices across the UK. The population base for OPCRD is all patients at contributing practices excluding patients who have opted out. OPCRD collects the following deidentified data:
(1) electronic health records (EHR) data of patients (coded data, free text and documents/attachments);
(2) questionnaire data of patients collected as part of normal healthcare provision, and may include questionnaire data for any condition or disease in primary care; and
(3) OPCRD-linked data from other health-related datasets and registries.Deidentified data for each patient is organised into:
• Patient data – patient demographics and registration details.
• Clinical data – clinical or medical history, symptoms and diagnoses.
• Therapy data – prescriptions for drugs, therapies, appliances and devices issued to patients.
• Referrals data – referrals or care received outside the practice.
• Questionnaire data – patient responses from questionnaires.Research programme
OPCRD supports academic and commercial researchers and organisations, healthcare providers and commissioners, NHS organisations, government bodies and charitable organisations, etc. OPCRD is available to researchers for conducting robust scientific and medical research in all fields, including but not limited to: • Epidemiology • Pharmacoepidemiology, drug utilisation and drug safety • Public health research • Pragmatic trials in primary care including implantation and cluster-randomised trials • Post authorisation safety studies • Medical devices and technology • Research of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic methodologies including algorithms. • Health economics and resource utilisation • Clinical audits and quality improvement Data held in OPCRD is representative of routine clinical care and enables the study of real-world effectiveness and healthcare utilisation patterns for chronic conditions. The magnitude and diversity of the data affords researchers the required statistical power to conduct longitudinal cohort and case-control studies. OPCRD provides approved researchers and organisations access to anonymised patient level and aggregated data research. All studies are required to show scientific merit, fulfil the research purpose outlined, and demonstrate potential benefit to health and social care. Proceeds from OPCRD data access and feasibility assessments are re-invested into OPC services for the continued free provision of patient quality improvement programmes for contributing GP practices.
Research database title
Optimum Patient Care Research Database (OPCRD)
Establishment organisation
Optimum Patient Care Limited (OPC)
Establishment organisation address
5 Coles Lane
Cambridge
England, United Kingdom
CB24 3BA