NHS England has been directed by the government to establish and operate the OpenSAFELY COVID-19 Service and the OpenSAFELY Data Analytics Service. These services provide a secure environment that supports research, clinical audit, service evaluation and health surveillance for COVID-19 and other purposes.

Each GP practice remains the controller of its own GP patient data but is required to let approved users run queries on pseudonymised patient data. This means identifiers are removed and replaced with a pseudonym.

Only approved users are allowed to run these queries, and they will not be able to access information that directly or indirectly identifies individuals.

Patients who do not wish for their data to be used as part of this process can register a type 1 opt out with their GP.

The legal basis for this processing is:

• Article 6(1)(c) – processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; and

• Article 9(2)(h) – processing is necessary for medical and public health purposes under UK law.

GP practices are legally required to provide data under the NHS OpenSAFELY Data Analytics Service Pilot Directions 2025