The Health Research Data Platform - Saskatchewan, or HRDP-SK, will be Saskatchewan’s first fully integrated and streamlined multi-agency data access platform for health research and analysis.

• Make evidence-based decisions
• Study patterns of care, health utilization and costs
• Drive system improvement and transformation
• Influence and advise health policy, programming and funding
• Provide information about disease trends and risk factors
• Analyze outcomes of treatments and health interventions

The HRDP-SK is a platform that streamlines the process for researchers to access health data.
 

The HRDP-SK will build significant research capacity and may be leveraged in the future to build capacity for other secondary data purposes. The platform will be beneficial to both researchers and health organizations. Researchers will have timely, appropriate, reliable and predictable access to health system Data in a remote access environment. The HRDP-SK team and health organizations will work collaboratively to implement standardized and efficient processes for managing data access requests and data sharing, thus minimizing variation, redundancies and inefficiencies.
 

Development of the HRDP-SK is being funded by Saskatchewan Centre for Patient-Oriented Research and its partners: eHealth Saskatchewan, University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina, Saskatchewan Polytechnic, First Nations University of Canada, Saskatchewan Research Health Foundation, Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, Saskatchewan Health Authority, Saskatchewan Health Quality Council and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health.

The Data included in the HRDP-SK contains information about people and providers who have interacted with Saskatchewan health care services.

• The information in the HRDP-SK central repository is de-identified, which means that all patient and provider information that could potentially identify an individual has been removed or replaced (e.g., name, telephone number, address, and identifying numbers such as Health Services Number, chart number)
   
• Before the Data can be used, the individual’s health card number is masked, which means the real number is replaced with a fake number.
   
• Any results that are used by researchers must be anonymized. This means no single person can be identified. For example, each number must represent at least five people.

1. Discharge Abstract Database
    
2. Person Health Registry System
    
3. Medical Services Branch - Physician Billing Data
    
4. Prescription Drug Data
    
5. National Ambulatory Care Reporting System

• Researchers will complete the Data Access Process for Research Teams.
   
• Organizations who are the owners of the Data being requested (or Trustees, if the data is personal health information pursuant to The Health Information Protection Act), will review the request and, if it is in alignment with The Health Information Protection Act, they will approve a disclosure of Data per the request.
   
• A research agreement will be created between the research team and the data owner(s) or Trustee(s) to outline the details of what Data will be shared and the processes the team is required to follow.
   
• The HRDP-SK team will provide orientation and support members from the research team to set up their account to become authorized HRDP-SK users.
   
• The HRDP-SK team will extract the requested Data and place it in a secure research environment where the researchers will complete their analysis.
   
• When their analysis is complete, the HRDP-SK users will request their outputs be vetted by the HRDP-SK team. This includes a detailed review to ensure that the Data being released is anonymized (i.e., could not identify individuals).
   
• Throughout this process, the HRDP-SK users are supported with consultations and training. They will be provided access to extensive resources, including a data dictionary and database overviews, which will support increased data literacy and effective use of Data.