Procurement awards for cloud infrastructure and trusted research environment
The contracts have been awarded following a comprehensive procurement process supported by CURSHAW, with bids from many suppliers.
These contracts will play an important role in helping us to achieve our aim of transforming the prevention, detection and treatment of conditions such as dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke, so future generations can live in good health for longer.
Cloud infrastructure
The contract for cloud infrastructure has been awarded to Microsoft. It will allow us to utilise Microsoft’s exceptionally secure Azure cloud platform, which is already used by the NHS.
This contract involves providing a secure and scalable public cloud infrastructure to support our programme. The cloud infrastructure will be hosted in the UK and will underpin web sites and apps used by our volunteers, a data store and data processing systems, a trusted research environment (TRE) and associated systems used by researchers.
Trusted Research Environment (TRE) and researcher billing
The contract for our trusted research environment (TRE) and researcher billing has been awarded to DNAnexus.
A TRE enables registered and approved researchers to access and use data within a secure environment to conduct approved research studies. It allows researchers to use a variety of research tools including genomic analysis. DNAnexus will provide this alongside a service to manage the billing of cloud compute and storage costs for researchers using the TRE.
Any trusted research environment holding Our Future Health volunteers’ data will need to successfully complete our strict accreditation process. All data that is shared with us is stored in our secure data store, in compliance with all relevant data protection laws. Identifiable data, such as names, addresses and GP details are removed and securely stored separately. The data is encrypted at all times. This de-identified data is only made available within these secure research environments to registered researchers who have been given approval for their project via our Access Board.
Learn more about our trusted research environment and how we’re dedicated to keeping our volunteers’ data safe and available securely for research.
Other supplier contracts awarded
We have awarded contracts for several other suppliers that will help support our programme. Learn more about our suppliers.
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