NHS England primary care datasets

NHS England primary care datasets#

Last modified: 20 May 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:

  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.

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

Comprehensive information on the structure and purpose of the GDPPR dataset is available from NHS England2.
In summary:

  • The GDPPR dataset was established to fulfil the urgent need for general practice data for planning and research in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Data is only taken from GP practices where a practice has opted into the service via the CQRS.

  • Only specific coded and structured data are extracted from the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) for inclusion in the GDPPR dataset, meaning that not all patients’ records are included.

  • The GDPPR dataset uses SNOMED CT codes, grouped into ‘clusters’ or ‘reference sets’.

  • The list of SNOMED CT codes that are included in the GDPPR dataset is updated periodically in line with the business rules that govern patient inclusion and extracted record content. These rules can be downloaded via NHS England’s Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF)

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 51.0.03 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.

N.B. The downloadable file contains 44,172 unique SNOMED CT codes and is in ‘long’ format to reflect the fact that most of the codes are in more than one cluster.

Note
Every endeavour has been made by UK LLC to ensure the links provided contain up-to-date and helpful information about the content of the GDPPR dataset. UK LLC reviews these links regularly, but cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided. Guidebook users can help to update, or expand, the information available to other researchers either via Github (using these instructions) or by emailing support@ukllc.ac.uk.
We welcome all contributions to UK LLC Guidebook.

  1. As documented in the data sharing agreement

  2. Web page accessed 24.03.2025

  3. 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.

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