Russ, patient and member of the Secure Data Environment (SDE) Citizen's Advisory Panel, talks about his role in supporting the development of the SDE in Greater Manchester.

Citizen voices are integral to the development of the SDE with key topics and questions about the programme being discussed monthly in a Citizen's Advisory Panel of puplic members representative of the population of Greater Manchester.

Secure Data Environments (SDEs) are highly secure computing environments that provide access to health and care data for approved researchers to use only. SDEs put virtual walls around the data to ensure that users can only access data that they are approved for, and provide secure access to analytical and statistical tools for conducting research.

Imagine an SDE as a glass box in a research laboratory. The material being studied is safely stored inside the box and cannot be removed, but can be examined securely by those who have been approved, for the purposes of research.

The data being studied in the SDE is always de-identified and cannot be used to identify you as an individual. Instead, it allows researchers to explore health trends at a group or population level to help us understand the big health questions facing our region.

Find out more at: https://gmwearebettertogether.com/