NHS England Data Sharing Remote Audit: Centre for Health Economics at the University of York

Purpose

This report records the key findings of a remote data sharing audit of The Centre for Health Economics (CHE) at the University of York (UoY) between 06 – 10 October 2025. It provides an evaluation of how CHE and its Processor conform to the requirements of:

• the data sharing framework contract (DSFC) CON-314909-S3P2M (Version 2.02)
• the data sharing agreement (DSA) DARS-NIC-667040-B5T1X-v0.12
• the organisations’ own policies, processes and procedures

 This DSA covers the provision of the following datasets:

The Controller is the UoY and the Processor is Amazon Web Services.

The CHE is a research department of UoY, dedicated to the study of the economics of health and health care. CHE produces policy relevant research and innovative methods that advance the use of health economics to improve population health. As the NHS continues to grapple with financial pressures, research carried out in CHE aims to support decisions about where and how increasingly limited budgets are spent.

The interviews during the audit were conducted through video conferencing.

This is an exception report based on the criteria expressed in the Data Sharing Audit Guide version 4.

Audit type and scope 

Data recipient’s acceptance statement

CHE has reviewed this report and confirmed that it is accurate.

Data recipient’s action plan

CHE will establish a corrective action plan to address each finding shown in the findings table. The Audit Team will validate this plan and the resultant actions will be followed up by the IG Risk and Assurance team at NHS England to confirm the findings have been satisfactorily addressed.

The Audit has identified 5 opportunities for improvement which are provided for reference only and will not be followed up.

The following table identifies the 2 agreement nonconformities and 3 follow-ups raised as part of the audit.

The following table identifies 5 opportunities for improvement which could help an organisation improve its controls or processes.

Use of data

CHE confirmed that the datasets were only being processed and used for the purposes defined in the DSA and were only being linked with those datasets explicitly allowed in the DSA.

Data location

CHE confirmed that processing and storage locations, including disaster recovery and backups, of the datasets were limited to the location shown in the following table.  These locations conform with the territory of use defined in section 2c of the DSA.

Backup retention

The duration for which data may be retained on backup media is:

The audit was based upon a sample of the data recipient’s activities, as observed by the Audit Team. The findings detailed in this audit report may not include all possible nonconformities which may exist. In addition, as the audit interviews were conducted through a video conference platform, certain controls that would normally be assessed whilst onsite could not be witnessed. 

NHS England has prepared this audit report for its own purposes. As a result, NHS England does not assume any liability to any person or organisation for any loss or damage suffered or costs incurred by it arising out of, or in connection with, this report, however such loss or damage is caused. NHS England does not assume liability for any loss occasioned to any person or organisation acting or refraining from acting as a result of any information contained in this report.