FAQs

We provide data curation services in a secure electronic environment. Our services include linkage across datasets from Te Whatu Ora National Collections, and compatible NHI encryption to enable external research datasets to be linked to required national data. 

There are a variety of ways you can use the Health Data Platform’s services. For example: 

1. Research that uses data hosted by our service, i.e. data from Te Whatu Ora National Collections that has been processed to be ready for use. 

2. Researchers with study-specific datasets that need to be linked to data from the National Collections. 

3. Lecturers can use authentic NZ health data for teaching. 

4. Students can use our service for their research project. 

You can contact the team through our email: healthdata@auckland.ac.nz . We will try to answer your queries as soon as possible.

The first step is to submit a proposal through the data service request form on our proposals page. If you are having trouble accessing our proposals page, please submit the proposal through our email healthdata@auckland.ac.nz . 

You must be a user of this website. Please register by emailing healthdata@auckland.ac.nz . You will recieve a confirmation email that you are signed up. Once you have been set up please use your university login. A ‘save draft’ button will appear at the bottom of each section of the form. When you would like to resume, simply log back in. 

If you would like to discuss the pricing for your research please email healthdata@auckland.ac.nz  . We will provide a quote with specific prices after a data service request form is submitted and after an initial cosnultation. 

We recommend that your project has received ethics approval before submitting your proposal. This will ensure a timely and smooth transition to begin the data curation process. New Zealand health research requires either approval from Health and Disability Ethics Committees (HDECs) or University of Auckland ethics approval through AHREC or UAHPEC. Please refer to https://ethics.health.govt.nz/hdec-reviews-and-approvals/how-to-apply-for-hdec-review for information about HDEC ethics or  https://research-hub.auckland.ac.nz/subhub/manage-ethics-and-regulatory-obligations for information about University of Auckland Human Ethics. 

Data are stored on a secure server and cannot be shared outside of the server. You will be allocated a private folder with data for your specific project, that can only be accessed by members of your research team for analysis, and by our Data Manager for data ingress and egress.

Raw routinely collected health datasets are rarely ready for use in research; they are massive, difficult to work with, and contain sensitive information. The Health Data Platform curates these de-identified datasets in a secure environment, extracting, combining, and defining variables so the information required for your project is in ‘ready-to-analyse’ form. We are also able to link project-specific datasets to data from the National Collections, for example, linking data from clinical research cohort to national data on readmissions and death. 

Check out our Datasets page to see the collections we are working with.