The Health Informatics Centre (HIC) supports high impact research through the collection and management of high quality data in a secure environment with strong data governance, and its delivery to academics and other users, to improve healthcare and population health.

HIC’s data collection strategy is well-developed, covering long-term collections of whole populations, such as Scottish Morbidity Register (SMR) hospitalisation data and dispensed community prescription data, to short-term collections and disease-specific coverage, such as the Genetic Origins of Diabetes Tayside (GoDARTS). HIC has a technical focus in its acquisition of data - developing new systems to collect and channel data from other partners.

HIC’s data management processes, as part of the TAyside medical Science Centre (TASC), are safe and effective and include secure hosting & backup, robust governance procedures and the completion of missing data (e.g. the Community Health Index - CHI) to improve quality and allow linkage between datasets.

Current work will see HIC’s future delivery processes standardised around the HIC safe haven, in a collaborative development with the University of Dundee’s College of Life Sciences, along with a range of services in support of patient recruitment for research studies. HIC is committed to supporting research use of data through the delivery of high quality metadata, links to expert users and clinical staff along with support to users in managing and analysing the data.

Our work, involving collaboration at regional, national and international levels, is founded on over 2 decades of successful partnership between the University of Dundee and NHS Tayside.