General practitioner offices have begun signing up to participate in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, which will link National Health Service (NHS) patient records across general practitioners' offices, hospitals, and registries to give researchers access to data sets that follow patients throughout their lives. An estimated 52 million patients will have their health records linked in the system.
The system will only be accessible to those who are doing medical research and will cost private companies wanting to use the data £50,000 to £100,000 a study. Before proposed researchers are able to access the patient records, they will have to gain approval from a local ethics committee and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which runs the CPRD.
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