Our latest data release took place last week – and it’s a major one. We’re excited to share that we’ve added or enhanced several new data sets – from releasing more imputed data, to sharing ancestry data for the first time.    

This release unlocks exciting new possibilities for researchers, as our Director of Science and Biostatistics, Dr Ben Cairns, explains:  

“Our latest data release marks a new milestone for the programme, with questionnaire data from over 2 million volunteers now held in our secure research environment. We’ve substantially expanded our genetic data, with 755,000 participants with imputed genotypes, genetic ancestry, kinship, and principal components. We’ve also added exciting new datasets, including historical cancer records back to 1985 and point-of-care cholesterol measurements for 1.2 million participants.  

“This larger, richer data release will not only help researchers to better understand conditions like cancer, and the genetic causes of disease and response to treatment, but to make their discoveries even faster and with greater precision.” 

Imputed data increases by over 200,000 participants   

We’ve increased the number of participants with imputed data from 550,000 participants to 755,000, with a harmonised set of participants across datasets. This expanded dataset gives researchers greater coverage of genetic variation, improving power for discovery.   

New genetic ancestry data  

We’ve added new inferred genetic ancestry data for all 755,000 participants with imputed data. This means we now have more participants with genetic data and ancestry information than any other biobank.   

Our Future Health is building a diverse community of volunteers that truly reflects the UK’s population. Our dataset will enable more equitable research into diverse populations and will benefit researchers working on risk and prediction, specific subpopulations and precision medicine.  

Questionnaire data reaches record levels  

We’ve added questionnaire data for an extra 92,000 participants. It means Our Future Health is now the first research cohort of its kind to offer researchers access to questionnaire data from more than 2 million participants.  

This unprecedented scale will allow researchers to explore complex interactions between lifestyle, environment and health outcomes with far greater precision than ever before.   

Other new data includes:   

• a greater depth and coverage of data for cancer research, including 190,000 participants with cancer records and up to 38 years of cancer registry data (1985-2023)   

• expanded clinic measurements data, including new point-of-care-test lipid profile data (total, HDL and LDL cholesterol and triglycerides) for 1.2 million participants  

• complete annual secondary care data (2024/25) 

Our TRE – in numbers

This is the 14th data release since we began adding data to our TRE in January 2023.   

As well as our new and enhanced data sets, we’ve released new participant data into our TRE. Here’s a snapshot of the types of data in our TRE, and the number of volunteers for each category, as of 4 June 2026:  

Data type	Number of volunteers in our TRE
Answers to our health and lifestyle questionnaire	2,021,810
Geographical data	1,983,038
Genetic data (genotype array and imputed data)	755,000
Clinic measurements	1,518,202
Linked health records	1,690,704

Live studies in our TRE

Our volunteers’ data is already being used by health researchers to find new ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases.   

You can read more about this in the following features:   

• Dr Sasha Philbert: ‘This resource has the potential to be transformative for dementia research’ 

• Professors Frank Kee and Amy Jayne McKnight: ‘Our Future Health’s data will help to deepen our understanding of health inequalities’  

To see a full list of approved studies that are analysing Our Future Health’s data, visit the Health Data Research Gateway.