UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC): The National Trusted Research Environment for Longitudinal Research
journal contribution
posted on 2025-03-18, 16:17 authored by Andy Boyd, Katharine Evans, Emma L Turner, Robin Flaig, Jacqui Oakley, Kirsteen C Campbell, Richard Thomas, Stela McLachlan, Matthew Crane, Rebecca Whitehorn, Rachel Calkin, Abigail Hill, Samantha Berman, David Ford, Martin TobinMartin Tobin, David Porteous, Danielle F Gomes, Maria-Paz Garcia, Andrew Wong, Aida Sanchez, Chris Orton, Simon Thompson, John Gulliver, Kathryn Adams, Ellena Badrick, Chiara Batini, Michaela Benzeval, Susie Boatman, Gerome Breen, Shannon Bristow, Abigail Britten, Luke Bryant, Adam Butterworth, Archie Campbell, Sarah Chave, John Danesh, Jayati Das-Munshi, Karen Dennison, Emanuele Di Angelantonio, Thalia C Eley, Helen Fisher, Emla Fitzsimons, Alissa Goodman, Michael Gregg, Anna L Guyatt, Anna HansellAnna Hansell, Rebecca Harmston, Andy Heard, Morag Henderson, Rosie Hill, Szu-Chia Huang, Catherine John, Frank Kee, Nathalie Kingston, Jack Kneeshaw, Rashmi Kumar, Genevieve Lachance, Celestine Lockhart, Hazel Lockhart-Jones, Sarah Markham, Dan Mason, Bernadette McGuinness, Maisie McKenzie, Amy McMahon, Chelsea Mika Malouf, Mark Mumme, Charlotte Neville, Kate Northstone, Zoe Oldfield, Dara O’Neill, Manish PareekManish Pareek, John Pickavance, Yasmin Rahman, Holly Reilly, Angela Scott, Deb Smith, Andrew Steptoe, Claire Steves, Cathie Sudlow, Gerald Sze, Nicholas L Timpson, Tapiwa Tungamirai, Laura Venn, Matthew Walker, Neil Walker, Nicolas Wareham, Aidan Watmuff, Tony Webb, Karen Williams, John Wright, Darioush Yarand, George B Ploubidis, John Macleod, Jonathan AC Sterne, Nishi ChaturvediIntroductionThe UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC) is the national Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for the UK's longitudinal research community, supporting the UK's unparalleled collection of Longitudinal Population Studies (LPS). Initially set up as a COVID-19 research resource, UK LLC is now a generic database for any research for the public good.
ObjectivesUK LLC supports longitudinal research by providing record linkage and TRE services.
MethodsThe UK LLC partnership provides a secure analytics environment, a trusted third-party linkage processor and a comprehensive governance framework to minimise risks to participant confidentiality. UK LLC is ISO 27001 certified and accredited by the UK Statistics Authority as a processor under the Digital Economy Act. The active involvement by members of UK LLC's public involvement programme ensures UK LLC is acceptable to LPS participants and the wider public. All UK LPS are eligible for inclusion. Researchers can apply to access the TRE via an approach that fulfils the needs of the LPS, the linked data owners and includes a review by public contributors.
ResultsTwenty-two LPS have so far joined UK LLC. Where permissions allow, participants are linked to their National Health Service (NHS) England, NHS Wales and place-based records, with work ongoing to link to NHS Scotland and non-health administrative records, including Department for Work and Pensions and His Majesty's (HM) Revenue and Customs. UK LLC Explore allows potential researchers to discover the breadth of data available in the TRE. All applications are listed on UK LLC's publicly accessible Data Access Register.
ConclusionsUK LLC enables researchers to interrogate pooled LPS participant data that are systematically linked to diverse records. UK LLC remains open to additional LPS joining the partnership and will increase the breadth of data to support the longitudinal research community and attract increasing numbers of researchers across multiple disciplines, government departments and industry.
Funding
UK LLC is a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded infrastructure with co-funding from the Medical Research Council (MR/X021556/1) and Economic and Social Research Council (ES/X000567/1). The initial funding which established UK LLC was provided by the UKRI-funded Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study led by UCL and University of Bristol (MC_PC_20030 and MC_PC_20059). The protocol development was informed by ABoyd’s secondment to the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/S016732/1) to scope options for improving the inclusiveness of UK longitudinal research through increased use of population data; funding from the Wellcome Trust (221574/Z/20/Z) for a secretariat to co-ordinate the response to the COVID-19 pandemic; and funding for the ALSPAC birth cohort study which is core funded by the UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the University of Bristol (217065/Z/19/Z). The onward design, implementation and operations of UK LLC have been supported by staff from all the contributing LPS. Acknowledgements and funding for each contributing LPS are provided in the Supplementary Materials. UK LLC is a member of the DATAMIND consortium which is addressing infrastructure needs for mental health research (MRC: MR/W014386/1) and is also supported by National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funding to establish greater functionality to support occupational health research (NIHR: NIHR20671). UK LLC is also a member of the HDR UK Social and Environmental Determinants of Health driver programme, which is supporting enhanced geo-spatial linkage capabilities (HDRUK2023.0029). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of any of the funders or the organisations contributing data into the UK LLC.
History
Author affiliation
College of Life Sciences Population Health Sciences Respiratory SciencesVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
