About us

History

As one of Europe's oldest general practice (GP) sentinel networks we have been the primary source for disease surveillance in England since 1957.  In 2019 a collaboration was formed between the University of Oxford, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), and the government’s UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA to run the RCGP Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC).

Today

The ORCHID database is  hosted by the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.   We extract and aggregate data from primary care computer systems and other parts of the health system to monitor illnesses in England and Wales. We also conduct virology and serology sampling, and deliver novel health research across the UK. Our network includes nearly 2000 volunteer GP practices.

WE DELIVER:

• A twice-weekly communicable and respiratory disease report available at: RCGP Public health data
• Data to UKHSA. This includes daily syndromic surveillance data to support early warning systems, responsive surveillance data to answer urgent questions of public health importance, and data to measure vaccine effectiveness for respiratory and other illnesses
• Clinical informatics in the form of Practice Dashboards (practice-level information to support practices in our network) and Observatories (network-wide analytics that are publicly available)
• The ORCHID database as a resource for UK-wide health research, this is a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) with expertly curated themed datasets and is used to undertake health research e.g. observational (cohort) and interventional (trial) studies