We last spoke to Research Data Scotland (RDS) in 2020 (yikes!) and a lot has changed since then. Most notably, in April 2024 they officially launched their Researcher Access Service (RAS). In this post, we want to try and summarise the RAS service and do a little exploration into how the service will hopefully improve things for eCRUSADers going forward.
First of all, we will give you a brief overview of the RAS and provide links to lots of useful information on the RDS website. We will then take a look at the online application system for the RAS pathway and think about how this compares to the current system of applying via the Health and Social Care Public Benefit Privacy Panel (HSC-PBPP). We will outline the costs for data access compared to the standard route and think about what the benefits are for eCRUSADers. We will also hear from the Electronic Data Research Innovation Service (eDRIS) team at Public Health Scotland (PHS) who are working with the RAS system to see how it is changing things for them, as well as hear from one of the researchers who was recently successful in getting funding from RDS to carry out a project using the new RAS. Finally, we have a word with RDS Chief Executive Officer, Professor Roger Halliday, to ask if eCRUSADers can expect more information on the expected turnaround times for projects that go through RAS.
Post Contents:
- What is the Researcher Access Service (RAS)?
- How does access to the RAS work?
- How is it affecting the work that eDRIS do?
- What is the cost of the RAS service?
- Some words from a researcher currently using the RAS
- What is the cost of the RAS service?
- What are the benefits of the RAS service?
- Summary and a final word from RDS’s Chief Executive Officer
What is the Researcher Access Service?
The RAS is a digital service that makes it quicker and simpler to access to public sector datasets for research. At the moment, the platform provides access to nine of Public Health Scotland’s most frequently requested health care datasets held in Scotland’s National Safe Haven (NSH), which receive periodic updates. Those datasets are:
- SMR01: Outpatient Appointments and Attendances
- SMR01: General Acute Inpatient and Day Case
- SMR02: Maternity Inpatient and Day Case
- SMR04: Mental Health Inpatient and Day Case
- SMR06: Scottish Cancer Registry
- Prescribing Information Systems (PIS)
- National Records of Scotland (NRS) Births registrations
- National Records of Scotland (NRS) deaths registrations
More information on the date ranges and variables available are on the RDS website on the RDS website.
The idea is that if your project only requires access to these nine, or a selection of these nine, datasets, then access to them can be made quicker than the standard route via PBPP, as usual within a specific NSH research study space.
How does access to the RAS data work?
First of all, researchers complete and submit an Enquiry Form. The form asks for some information about the researcher and the project, including which datasets are required. Once this is submitted, a member of the eDRIS team will assess whether or not the project meets the requirements for the RAS pathway or if it will need to go through the current PBPP pathway. A project will progress through the RAS pathway if it meets the following criteria:
If these criteria are met, the researcher will proceed to filling in the online RAS Application Form. The form covers much of the same information that is required in a PBPP application, i.e., everything in the 5 Safes Framework, but it excludes some irrelevant questions. For example, questions in section 5 of the PBPP on safe data processing and security mostly do not apply since RAS datasets are held and accessed in the NSH only. It’s essentially a more streamlined version of the PBPP form.
The other significant difference to the current PBPP form is that the application is done online, interactively via the RAS Dashboard. This is where eCRUSADers can get excited! Researchers and eDRIS can ask questions/make comments/queries directly on the online application platform! They no longer have to work with a Word document, sending versions back and forward between the research team and eDRIS coordinators. No more yellow highlighter, strikethroughs, complicated marking up and editing resulting in things easily getting lost and confusing! It’s a game changer. The video blow shows a brief demo of what the RAS dashboard looks like.
The amendments process has also been simplified and there is a clear pathway for seeking an amendment for the four standard reasons we might want one post data access:
- To add a researcher
- To extend the project end date
- To request additional data (from within the RAS pathway)
- To add research questions.
Once again, this process should be simpler and quicker than the current situation. Of course, if any amendment takes the project significantly out of scope, then it might be that a new application is required. This may even require it to go into the PBPP approval process for example if you wish to add data outside the scope of the RAS pathway, or if you are requesting to add particularly sensitive or potentially high-risk study questions. In this first iteration of RAS, it will also be possible to request to remove a researcher from the project or if a researcher moves institutions and wishes to remain part of the study team, change their institution details, but there is currently not a self-service amendment option for researchers to do so. This will likely change as the service develops.
How is this affecting the work that eDRIS do?
We asked eDRIS how they feel the new service will change the work that they do going forward.
Principal Information Development Manager, James Watson, said:
“This is a different way of working for the eDRIS team but the entirely digital service should reduce our administrative time, allowing us to support the variety of research projects that seek health and administrative data and help streamline our processes.”
eDRIS Research Coordinator Judi Evans added “It is certainly easy to see at a glance the progress of each application, and once into a specific application, the majority of actions either by colleagues or applicants are clear and in one place. This compares favourably with our traditional way of working for projects on the PBPP pathways where there is a lot of flicking between email, SharePoint, ServiceNow and local copies of files”.
Some words from researcher currently using the RAS
Dr Matthew Iveson, Senior Data Scientist in the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and fellow eCRUSADer, was recently awarded grant-funding from RDS for his project “Antidepressant exposure, response and resistance in severe mental illness”. We asked Matthew how his experience with the RAS has been so far. Here’s what he had to say:
What is the cost of the RAS service?
Figure 1 below shows the RAS pricing guide. For academics, the cost of accessing data via the RAS Approved Pathway is £6,344 excluding VAT. This covers up to two researchers for two years of data access and covers any combination of the RAS datasets.
Figure 1
An additional cost of £1,087 (excluding VAT) is incurred for each of the following amendments: adding an additional approved researcher, extending the project end date (by one year) and requesting additional data (from within the RAS pathway after 30 days access. There is no charge for the addition of a research question or for the addition of data within 30 days of data access. This is to account for instances where there has been an omission to the required data which wasn’t obvious before viewing the data or to make right an issue where the requirements for the cohort or linkage selection/filtering criteria isn’t as expected.
Compared to the standard PBPP-Pathway, the basic RAS costs are the same as the basic charge for a small eDRIS study (£6,344 excluding VAT). Like RAS, PBPP-pathway projects will incur additional costs for some amendments and these are assessed on a per project basis depending on the timescales and work involved. Similarly, any updates to PBPP-pathway projects are assessed on a case-by-case basis. You can view the eDRIS pricing guide here.
In general, compared to the standard PBPP-Pathway, the basic RAS costs work out around the same as a small eDRIS study. In both pathways, amendments and updates may incur an additional cost, but these are worked out slightly differently. In theory, a RAS approved project may work out to be significantly cheaper than the PBPP-pathway in certain circumstances. For example, a project requesting access to all nine of the RAS datasets may work out as an eDRIS medium or large study, which would incur a much greater standard charge (£15,860 and £23,790 respectively). On the other hand, a smaller scale project with a large research team requesting access for a longer time horizon, may work out cheaper to go through the PBPP-pathway. Overall, the total cost of a project on either pathway will depend on many factors, including how many amendments and updates a project requires.
What are the benefits of the RAS?
So there appear to be lots of benefits to the RAS service that eCRUSADers can be excited about:
- Researchers can clearly see which datasets, variables and time periods are available to request
- The application is simpler and shorter
- The application is interactive- no more yellow highlighter, strikethroughs and email trails!
- Researchers can track the progress and status of their project through their RAS account
- Raising amendments is simpler and quicker via the self-serve function
- The service should be more responsive
- Access to data should be quicker
- Data access costs are potentially lower
Summary and a word from RDS’s Chief Executive Officer
Hopefully, this has given you a bit of an idea of how the new RAS will work and how this is a really positive change for eCRUSADers, especially those ECRs new to the administrative data world. It’s been great to hear from eDRIS and one of the researchers already using RAS to get their thoughts on how things are going so far. It seems that the benefits of eDRIS coordinators and researchers being able to communicate interactively in the application are already apparent. This system might get rid of some (but not all…) of the challenges we heard in our conversation with eDRIS back in 2021.
Since eCRUSADers was born in 2019, we’ve heard from a number of researchers with experience in accessing Scotland’s wealth of administrative data. By far the most common challenge they have told us about is the length of time it can take between data approval and data access, and more importantly how this time period is often an unknown factor. If the RAS is able to better predict this for researchers, this would be hugely valuable. We asked RDS’s Chief Executive Officer, Professor Roger Halliday, to say a few words on this:
Roger that 👍