NHS England primary care datasets

NHS England primary care datasets#

Last modified: 11 Aug 2025

Introduction#

The two primary care datasets currently available in the UK LLC TRE are:

Primary Care Medicines (PCM)
General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (GDPPR)

A summary of the PCM dataset, including coverage, restrictions on use and representation of LPS, is provided elsewhere in Guidebook (PCM).
Further information about GDPPR is below, with summary metrics on the next page (GDPPR).

The GDPPR dataset#

Researchers are permitted access to the GDPPR dataset under specific terms set by NHS England:

Research must be related to COVID-19. For examples of research purposes acceptable to NHS England see the COVID-19 Public Health Directions 2020.
The GDPPR dataset must not be used for any form of performance management of General Practices.

Coverage#

Table 1 Names, coverage, availability and ownership of primary care datasets in the UK LLC TRE

Name in TRE	Full name	Other name	Domain	Coverage	From	Data available in TRE¹	Owner
GDPPR	General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research	N/A	Primary care	England	1940s onwards	1940s onwards	NHSE

Summary:

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

The PCM dataset is also known as Medicines dispensed in Primary Care NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) dataset.

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.

The GDPPR dataset spans 1940s onwards and the PCM dataset 2015 onwards.

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.

Information about code clusters are available online:

The full list of code clusters can be explored via an NHS England dashboard: Microsoft Power BI.
The individual SNOMED codes included in each code cluster are listed on OpenCodelists

SNOMED CT codes included in the GDPPR All releases of the clusters are available online via the NHS TRUD (Technology Reference Update Distribution). UK LLC has downloaded Release 51.0.0¹ and made it available as a downloadable text file.

This material includes SNOMED Clinical Terms® (SNOMED CT®) which is used by permission of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO). All rights reserved. SNOMED CT®, was originally created by The College of American Pathologists. “SNOMED” and “SNOMED CT” are registered trademarks of the IHTSDO.

Dataset	Dataset name	Other name	Grouping	Coverage	Data available in TRE	Data owner
GDPPR	General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research	N/A	GP records	England	1940s onwards	NHSE
PCM	Primary Care Medicines	Medicines dispensed in Primary Care NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) dataset	Prescriptions	England	01/04/2015 onwards	NHSE

Notes
¹ N.B. Release 51.0.0 is dated 15.02.2024, while UK LLC’s GDPPR data was extracted on 26.04.2024. There is a chance that some of the drug cluster content may have changed slightly between the two dates because drug reference sets are released more frequently than the broader Primary Care Domain reference sets.