Services and Costs for the Academic Research
The GPRD Group offers access to the data via a variety of services designed to meet the needs of different research groups. These range from online access to the entire database, or to regional or age-specific subsets, through to the provision of data-sets or aggregate tables for single projects. Special pricing applies to the use of the GPRD for academic research:- Feasibility Counts
- Aggregate Data Tables
- Patient-level Data-sets
- Online access to live data
- Other Services
Feasibility Counts
Simple counts of patients and events for specified diseases or prescriptions are done free of charge.
Aggregate Data Tables
The cost of providing aggregated data tables varies with the complexity of the request and is based on researcher time spent extracting, analysing and preparing the data. Examples of different types of aggregate tables that could be provided include:
- Incidence rates or prevalence of a specified disease or event, stratified by gender, age group and year
- Counts of patients with a given disease stratified by type of secondary care referral, or drug prescribed
- Rates and patterns of therapy switching for a specified cohort of patients
- Aggregated person-time denominator data for those wishing to generate incidence themselves
Patient-level Data-sets
GPRD data-sets consist of a core data-set, which includes all clinical and prescription events for a defined cohort of patients, and optional data modules which contain additional data on these patients (e.g. referrals to secondary care, tests etc.). The cost of a data-set depends on the number of patients included, the number and type of different modules purchased, and the complexity of the data-set to be generated. The basic costs are outlined in the table below:
| Content | Description | Fee per dataset (GBP) |
|---|---|---|
| Core dataset | Includes all clinical and prescription events for patient cohorts with less than 50,000 subjects* | 8.1K |
| Additional costs by number of study patients: |
||
| 50,000 - 100,000 subjects | +2.7K | |
| More than 100,000 subjects | +5.4K | |
| Additional costs by providing fields by data module: |
||
| Test results | Quantitative and qualitative results of tests, including normal ranges for the laboratory | +2.15K |
| Secondary care referrals | In and out-patient referrals, including the speciality of the hospital department to which the patient was referred and the nature of the referral (e.g. day case etc) | +2.15K |
| Immunisation details | Includes immunisation status, stage and type, as well as the route of administration and reason for immunisation. | +1.63K |
| Registration details | Includes detailed information on patient registration dates and status (e.g. permanent, transferred out etc.), practice status (e.g. active, withdrawn etc.) and last collection date. These data are necessary for generating start and end dates for person-time calculations. Also includes health region information. | +1.63K |
| Lifestyle details | Includes BMI, height, weight, and data on smoking and alcohol consumption. | +1.08K |
| GP appointment details | Includes the duration of the consultation as well as staff role and gender. | +1.08K |
| Adverse drug reaction | Includes information on suspected adverse drug reactions, allergies and intolerance entered in the patient record, including certainty and severity assessments. | +1.08K |
| Additional clinical details | Includes supplementary data for a variety of situations (e.g. death administration) and conditions (e.g. asthma, diabetes). | +1.08K |
| Repeat prescription details | Includes details of the repeat prescription schedule such as the date until which the prescription can be issued. | +1.63K |
* A further 50% discount is applied to the total data-set cost (including all additional modules) where there are less than 1000 patients in the cohort.
In addition, research services costs are charged to cover the time taken to extract and generate the data-set.
Online access to live data
Researchers can access all up-to-date patient data in GPRD via a secure online service. Online access allows researchers to extract as many data-sets as they require for their research projects for which SEAG approval has been obtained1. Basic online access (called Level 3 access) includes access to all clinical and prescription events for all patients in GPRD, and costs £27,500 per annum. Researchers can choose to add optional data modules at additional cost according to their research requirements (Premium Level 3 access). The costs of online access are summarised in the table below. Online access to all patients and data modules costs £150,000 (Level 4 access).
We can also offer full Level 4 access to a restricted set of patients where this is technically feasible (e.g. those in a specific health region). The costs of this type of access is based on the proportion of accessible patients relative to the entire database.
| Content | Description | Fee per dataset (GBP) |
|---|---|---|
| Core data | Includes access to all clinical and prescription events for all patients in GPRD. | 30K |
| Additional costs for data modules: | ||
| Test results | Quantitative and qualitative results of tests, including normal ranges for the laboratory | 21.50K |
| Secondary care referrals | In and out-patient referrals, including the speciality of the hospital department to which the patient was referred and the nature of the referral (e.g. day case etc) | 21.50K |
| Immunisation details | Includes immunisation status, stage and type, as well as the route of administration and reason for immunisation. | 16.25K |
| Registration details | Includes detailed information on patient registration dates and status (e.g. permanent, transferred out etc.), practice status (e.g. active, withdrawn etc.) and last collection date. These data are necessary for generating start and end dates for person-time calculations. Also includes health region information. | 16.25K |
| Lifestyle details | Includes BMI, height, weight, and data on smoking and alcohol consumption. | 10.75K |
| GP appointment details | Includes the duration of the consultation as well as staff role and gender. | 10.75K |
| Adverse drug reactions | Includes information on suspected adverse drug reactions, allergies and intolerance entered in the patient record, including certainty and severity assessments. | 10.75K |
| Additional clinical details | Includes supplementary data for a variety of situations (e.g. death administration) and conditions (e.g. asthma, diabetes). | 10.75K |
| Repeat prescription details | Includes details of the repeat prescription schedule such as the date until which the prescription can be issued. | 16.25K |
1 All studies undertaken using GPRD data require approval from the Scientific and Ethical Advisory Group (SEAG).
Other Services
Follow-up and source data verification services which require direct contact with GPs (including sending questionnaires), are also available on request.
- Verification service, offering additional information (e.g. anonymised hospital letters, death certificates and GP-completed questionnaires) to validate diagnoses
- Anonymisation of the free text held in the patients' notes on FF-GPRD
Customer support provided
The GPRD Group has an experienced research team which assists customers with queries and can advise on data quality, study design and data analysis. Additionally, all customers are supported by our Helpdesk to help resolve any issues.
Contact us
We are happy to provide advice to academic departments wishing to use the GPRD for research. Please contact Dr Tim Williams - tim.williams@gprd.com for further information or the GPRD helpdesk - admin@gprd.com.