NHS England

ADR England works in partnership with NHS England to enable the use of national health data within the Education and Child Health Insights from Linked Data (ECHILD) dataset.

This collaboration is central to linking health and education data at population scale, creating new opportunities for research to improve outcomes for children and young people.

---

Providing national health data for research

NHS England plays a key role in ECHILD by providing access to national health datasets, including Hospital Episode Statistics, which capture information on hospital admissions, outpatient care and A&E attendances.

These data form a core component of the ECHILD dataset, enabling researchers to understand patterns of healthcare use and health outcomes across childhood and adolescence. Additional datasets, including mental health, maternity and community services data, further strengthen the breadth and depth of the resource.

Find out more about the dataset

Enabling integrated data linkage

Through collaboration with ADR England, UCL, and the Department for Education, NHS England supports the secure linkage of health data with education and social care records. This enables a more complete understanding of how health and other life experiences interact over time.

ECHILD is also being used as a pilot platform for developing wider cross-government approaches to linking health and administrative data.

Improving access and maintaining trust

NHS England is also working with partners to streamline researcher access through the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service, ensuring consistency and efficiency in how data is made available.

Alongside this, the organisation is committed to maintaining public trust through transparent governance, clear communication and responsible stewardship of health data used for research.