CRIS Project Application Form

Additional User for a CRIS Search

CRIS User ID: CRIS ADMIN to enter CRIS User ID

Details:

First Name: Enter first name here

Last Name: Enter last name here

Department: Enter department here

Email address

Please use Oxford Health or Psych email address for any communications regarding CRIS

Enter your email address here

Contract details

Do you have a substantive or honorary contract with Oxford Health? View Guidance Notes

Choose an item

If Yes contract type

Choose an item

If No, do you have a valid Research Passport?

Choose an item

Project Title

Enter project title here

Role in project

Enter the role here

Use of CRIS requires adherence to the Case Records Interactive Search (CRIS) Usage Regulations. Please note here that you have read and understood these requirements. View Guidance Notes

Case Records Interactive Search (CRIS) Usage Regulations read and understood ☐

By submitting this CRIS User application, you agree to treat CRIS data confidentially and in adherence to the guidelines stated above. You confirm to have the necessary research passport or an honorary or substantive contract with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust to be authorised to access CRIS. Your searches will be audited to ensure that all searches are within the remit of the project you specify in this application form. Any searches performed outside the remit of the application form will be queried with the user and where found in breach of CRIS terms and conditions, CRIS access may be withdrawn subject to discussions with the CRIS Oversight Committee. You agree and confirm that this project has the relevant audit approvals or if a research project has an official research supervisor.

Please email this completed form to CRIS.Admin@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk

Application Guidance Notes

Q3 Contract type - To be eligible to use CRIS you must either be employed by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust (OHFT), or have an honorary contract or letter of access from the Trust. If you are an NHS employee (but not part of OHFT) you do not require an honorary contract. Instead you will be issued with a letter of access (clear CRB check and evidence of substantive employment with your Trust). For further details, and to obtain an honorary research contract or letter of access, contact the research governance team in the R&D office: research @oxfordhealth.nhs.uk)

Q7 Case Records Interactive Search (CRIS) Usage Regulations

Background

CRIS provides a means of analysing anonymised data from the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust (OHFT) electronic case records. Ethical approval for such analyses was provided by Oxfordshire REC C National Research Ethics Service in July 2015. Access to clinical information is clearly a sensitive issue and a security model was developed which has been considered and approved by the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust Caldicott Guardian and the Trust Executive, as well as forming part of the ethics application.

Security Requirements of CRIS use

CRIS can only be accessed from the OHFT network. Data from CRIS must be kept within the Trust firewall and can only be saved on the CRIS shared drive on OHFT computers. CRIS data CANNOT be saved on personal or encrypted USB sticks. CRIS data CANNOT be emailed from OHFT machines to your personal email or Oxford University email. Please be aware that all data also has to be analysed within the OHFT firewall. You are not allowed to analysis CRIS data using University of Oxford or your own personal statistical software on our personal computers. Please also note that currently SPSS and R are the only statistical programmes that are available at the Research Team.

The security model includes regular audits of searches carried out using CRIS (all searches by all users are recorded and can be audited). For this to be possible, we keep a record of all projects carried out involving CRIS analysis along with general specification of the type of searches which will be required.

Ethics and research governance approval assume anonymity of the data analysed. As with any dataset, there is the potential within this database to compromise anonymity by generating unique variable combinations or rare categories. CRIS users are asked to consider whether this issue may occur and strategies to avoid compromising anonymity (Question 9 will provide scope to cover this). Alternatively they may wish to obtain specific ethics approval for an analysis where this risk is likely to be significant. Searching under clinician’ names are a sensitive issue; this type of information in research would have to be justified.

Rationale for Application Process

An oversight committee led by the Trust Caldicott Guardian will review all requests to use CRIS as an anonymised database. It is important for the Trust to demonstrate that OHFT clinical data are used responsibly and for projects with demonstrable research and clinical importance.

The future of CRIS, as with other aspects of OHFT research, depends on successful bids for future funding. This in turn requires evidence of use of the database, hence the need to keep a record of individual projects.

The CRIS Oversight Group has a role in facilitating CRIS analyses and to advise on how best to extract robust data. The database is potentially complex and users will be encouraged to collaborate and share expertise and hands-on experience. The information submitted in the project application form will be used to provide a database for this purpose to assist future researchers.