UK Research and Innovation’s Medical Research Council have announced a five-year investment totalling over £3.7m to develop Federated Data Science UK (FEDS UK), led by SeRP (Secure eResearch Platform) Co-director at Swansea University, Professor Simon Thompson.
Federated Data Science (FEDS) UK is a national consortium of leaders advancing the next generation of federated analytics solutions to revolutionise how health data is accessed and analysed across the UK. Building on the foundations of the DARE UK initiative (2023) and in partnership with Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) and key data partners, FEDS UK will unify and extend pioneering technologies to create a federated architecture for secure, efficient, and scalable analytical delivery across the UK’s health data ecosystem.
This initiative aims to break down the long-standing silos in UK data infrastructure by enabling analytics to be deployed across interconnected Trusted Research Environments (TREs) and Secure Data Environments (SDEs). The result will be a system that enhances the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR) of health data, empowering researchers and institutions to collaborate more effectively while maintaining data security and governance standards.
FEDS UK will operate in alignment with major national and international initiatives, including:
- GA4GH – adopting global interoperability standards for TREs and SDEs.
- ELIXIR – connecting UK infrastructure to the European Open Science Cloud.
- HDR UK – linking into national federated analytics and research programmes.
- ADR Wales – enabling cross-domain research that integrates traditional and non-traditional health data.
- ADDI – supporting dementia research through international federated collaboration.
- BioFAIR – embedding FAIR data principles across biological research.
- NHS SDE Programme – aligning with NHS data modernisation and access frameworks.
Originating from technologies developed at Swansea University’s SeRP (TELEPORT), and the co-created platform (TRE-FX) developed by SeRP, Manchester and Nottingham Universities, FEDS UK will combine and enhance these platforms into a single open-source software suite. This unified system will support federated learning, research object deployment, and multi-partner analytics, creating a robust and reusable foundation for the UK’s data-driven research future.
Commenting on the investment, SeRP’s Professor Simon Thompson, said, “FEDS UK will redefine how health and administrative data are shared across national and regional providers for scientific discovery. It will establish a secure, federated infrastructure in partnership with cross-organisation data governance models that enables researchers to safely access, analyse, and leverage data from multiple providers, without compromising privacy or security. This will allow these data resources to be used to generate groundbreaking scientific discoveries.”
In essence, FEDS UK represents a transformative leap toward a truly federated, collaborative, and future-proof data science infrastructure for the UK and beyond.
FEDS UK will help to support UK research initiatives like the Open Psychiatry Project, also announced today, to generate impactful benefits for patients and the public.
The Open Psychiatry Project will bring together diverse datasets on how genes, cells and molecules impact mental health conditions. The information will be presented on an interactive website, which will offer summaries of potential biomarkers, drug targets and treatments, helping to accelerate scientific discovery, commercial development and patient involvement in research.
At present, it is challenging to assess how these biomarkers affect mental health due to the difficulty of accessing and integrating data stored across different platforms and secure environments.
FEDS UK, alongside other projects being announced today, will enable researchers to analyse data across multiple secure environments without moving or exposing sensitive health or genetic information, ensuring privacy while enabling powerful new insights. This has been made possible by using privacy-preserving data federation technology.