Health Data Research UK (HDR UK)

Health Data Research UK is the national institute for health data, accelerating the trustworthy use of health data to enable discoveries that improve people’s lives. It is a charity funded by UK Research and Innovation, the Department of Health and Social Care in England and equivalents in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, and leading medical research charities. Its mission is to unite the UK’s health and care data to enable discoveries that improve people’s lives by uniting, improving and using health and care data.

In 2024, the UK DRI and HDR UK launched the Dementia Trials Accelerator, a £20m initiative supported by the government’s Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme (formerly known as the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission), to tackle the historically low numbers of people enrolled into dementia trials in the UK.

The Accelerator aims to rapidly identify a large group of people who are at risk of or diagnosed with early-stage dementia, boosting opportunities for these people to participate in research – and offering them the chance to receive potentially life-changing new treatments as part of a clinical trial.