Our Databases

Optimum Patient Care Research Database (OPCRD) holds anonymous data from over 1000 general practices in UK and over 18 million patient records.

The NHS Health Research Authority (NHS HRA) has approved OPCRD for clinical research purposes (REC reference: 20/EM/0148). Optimum Patient Care (OPC) provides anonymous OPCRD data to internal and external organisations for research, quality improvement and other purposes, subject to compliance with our data governance framework, licensing and fees.

The Anonymous Data Ethics Protocols and Transparency (ADEPT) committee is an independent body of experts and regulators commissioned by the Respiratory Effectiveness Group (REG) to govern the standards of research conducted on internationally recognised databases, including OPCRD.

All research using OPCRD must be registered on established study databases such as the European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCePP) .

OPCRD has supported various research publications in disease management, therapy and science.

Key Features

OPCRD has been purposefully designed to facilitate real-world data collection and address the growing demand for observational and pragmatic medical research, both in the UK and internationally.

OPCRD is known to have a number of unique qualities which set it apart from other scientific resources:

• De-identified electronic medical records of more than 18 million patients (inc. free text)
• OPCRD covers all UK clinical systems (EMIS, TPP SystmOne, InPS Vision, Microtest Evolution)
• OPCRD covers approximately 24% of the UK population, including England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland
• Long standing relationships with over 1000 GP practices facilitating enhanced data quality
• Linked patient reported outcomes for more than 68,000 patients
• Linkage to secondary care data sources including Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), the Information Services Division (ISD), NHS Wales Information Service (NWIS)
• Provides access to complementary, expert-level clinical data
• Ethnicity and Deprivation data

Our database facilitates a broad range of projects:

• Epidemiological study designs (i.e. cohort, case-control, case-series)
• Post authorisation safety studies (PASS)
• Pragmatic randomised clinical trials (RCT’s)
• Power calculation assumptions informed by real world data
• HTA funded randomised cluster controlled trials
• Research of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic methodologies
• Studies of rare disorders, therapies and their outcomes
• Numerous peer-reviewed publications featured in world renowned scientific journals

Our Growth

Constantly growing and dynamically updated data source – the database continues to grow at a rapid pace and has grown by 5.2 million patient records in the last 12 months.

OPCRD Growth Trend

OPCRD patient population regional source location

The patient population that OPCRD consists off is based across the UK with approximately 22% of the UK population included.