NHS England primary care datasets

Contents

NHS England primary care datasets#

Last modified: 29 Sep 2025

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 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.

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	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