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Frequently Asked Questions
Are we allowed to
provide confidential patient-related data to such a database?
Many UK general practices provide
anonymised data to research databases, and there is no impediment to this,
providing you ensure that the data are anonymised and used in accordance
with ethical principles. THIN data are anonymised prior to leaving the
practice during the data collection (or draw-down) process – this ensures
that all patient identifiers, such as name, address, date of birth, post
code, hospital number, etc. are NOT collected. The patient is known only
by the code number which your computer allocates to him/her, and cannot be
identified outside your practice. The Department of Health’s South East
Multicentre Research Ethical Committee has approved the THIN scheme.
Can I provide data to THIN if I am already providing
data to another research database?
Is THIN only open to practices in England?
Will our practice be identifiable?
Will the data extraction process damage our practice
computer or invalidate our maintenance contract with our computer
supplier?
If I decided to let InPS run my initial data
extraction, what would happen to my backup?
Does the data collection process take long?
Will we be asked to do any additional work?
It all sounds too good to be true. What are the
drawbacks?
If we join the scheme, are we committed to provide
data for any length of time? |
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