NHS England primary care datasets

Contents

NHS England primary care datasets#

Last modified: 20 Mar 2026

Primary care datasets cover tests, diagnoses and prescriptions recorded by General Practitioners (GPs) in England.

Summary:

UK LLC holds two NHS England primary care datasets: General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (GDPPR) and Medicines Dispensed in Primary Care (NHSBSA data) (PCM).

Researchers are permitted access to the GDPPR dataset under two specific terms set by NHS England:
1. Research must be related to COVID-19. For examples of research purposes acceptable to NHS England see the COVID-19 Public Health Directions 2020.
2. The GDPPR dataset must not be used for any form of performance management of General Practices.

Both the GDPPR and PCM datasets use primarily SNOMED CT codes. See the Coded variables guide for further details.

Overview of primary care datasets#

For further information see the individual dataset guides.

Table 1 Names, geographical coverage and availability of Primary Care datasets in the UK LLC TRE

Dataset	Dataset name	Grouping	Coverage	Data available in TRE
GDPPR	General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research	GP records	England	1940s onwards
PCM	Medicines Dispensed in Primary Care (NHSBSA data)	Prescriptions	England	01/04/2015 onwards