MR828 - CAUSE OF DEATH CODING: A VALIDATION EXERCISE

This Data Sharing Agreement permits the retention of the data for an interim period but no other processing of the data is permitted.

Permission to retain the data for the interim period is a practical step to enable the study to comply with the necessary legal and ethical requirements.

The following information provides background information on the purpose of the original study. No new data will be released under this version of the agreement, and this agreement allows the applicant to hold and not otherwise process any further data that has already been disseminated.

The following information provides background on the aim and purpose of the original study. No new data will be disseminated under v1 of this agreement.

BACKGROUND

The data supplied by the NHS IC to DASA (Health Information) Ministry of Defence (MOD) will be used only for the approved Medical Research Project MR828.

DASA (Defence and Security Accelerator, part of MoD) obtain information on all deaths occurring among in-service UK Armed Forces personnel. These data are coded by clinically accredited coders using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), since April 1995, ICD-10 has been used. In order to calculate standardised mortality ratios (using data from England and Wales as standard), it is essential to ensure that the coding procedures are similar between DASA and the ONS, for example, that there is no evidence of numerator-denominator bias.

Furthermore, there are concerns that the rate of suicide among the Armed Forces is greater than expected, based on national population rates, this is a particularly sensitive issue and it is imperative that DASA accurately identify suicides and related deaths.

NHS Digital data was requested to maintain death records.

GDPR Legal Basis for Processing: Article 6 (1)(E) and Article 9 (2)(J)

Legal Basis for Dissemination: Health and Social Care Act s261 (7)

Common Law Duty of Confidentiality: The study has Class Action support under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2001 (as re-enacted by Section 251 of the NHS Act 2006). ECC 2-04 (c)/2010.

MoD are the sole data controller and sole data processor.

All organisations party to this agreement must comply with the Data Sharing Framework Contract requirements, including those regarding the use (and purposes of that use) by “Personnel” (as defined within the Data Sharing Framework Contract ie: employees, agents and contractors of the Data Recipient who may have access to that data).

This Data Sharing Agreement permits the retention of the data for an interim period but no other processing of the data is permitted.

Permission to retain the data for the interim period is a practical step to enable the study to comply with the necessary legal and ethical requirements.

No new or further data will be provided under v1 of the agreement. A short term extension is in place as a pragmatic approach to enable legal retention of already disseminated data. This agreement allows retention of data, but not permission to otherwise process it.

Below is information provided by MoD on background to the study for details of previous disseminations, and also an insight into what is anticipated will happen once access to new data flows and permission to process data is granted in the future. As stated above - this version of the agreement permits retention of data only - permission is not granted to otherwise process the data at this stage until relevant documentation can be provided.

The data request is part of a validation exercise by MOD to confirm cause of death for UK armed forces, part of production of National Statistic on Deaths to UK Armed Force.

The following data is held and will not be processed under version 1 of this agreement:

• MRIS – Cause of Death Report

• MRIS – Cohort Event Notification Report

• MRIS – Flagging Current Status Report

• MRIS – Members and Postings Report

• MRIS – Personal Demographics Service

• MRIS – Scottish NHS / Registration

This is not research and is produced annually to meet Government holding to account agenda.

A data destruction certificate cannot be produced for data listed above because that would mean removal of required data, therefore, the data held under this agreement will be covered under a new MoD application.

Data will only be accessed by substantive employees of MoD and will not be accessed by any other third parties not mentioned in this agreement.

There will be no attempts made by MoD to re-identify individuals involved in this project as there is no requirement to do so.

This Data Sharing Agreement permits the retention of the data for an interim period but no other processing of the data is permitted.

Permission to retain the data for the interim period is a practical step to enable the study to comply with the necessary legal and ethical requirements.

No further outputs of the data are permitted to be created under this version of the agreement.

Enable MoD to accurately identify suicides and related deaths. NHS Digital data enables accurate death records to be maintained.

Not stated in the register.