Introduction

Quality is integral to Health Data Research UK’s (HDR UK) way of working. The policies, procedures and values that underpin our way of working, guide our actions to deliver outputs and services that are safe, compliant and trusted by funders, government, users and the public. They are essential for the delivery of our mission to unite the UK’s health data to make discoveries that improve people’s lives.

At HDR UK, our commitment is to never compromise on the quality of our outputs and services. This requires everybody to be engaged, to understand their responsibility and to be empowered to take action in order to protect patients, the public, our service users, our funders and our reputation.

At HDR UK, our Quality Policy summarises the essential elements of our commitment for excellence and includes:

  • Fostering a quality mind-set with the objective of delivering outputs and services that are trusted and valued by our funders, service users, and deliver on our promise to enable discoveries that improve people’s lives
  • Complying with relevant laws and regulations as well as internal requirements
  • Continuously challenging ourselves to improve the quality management system to guarantee output and service quality through the review of quality objectives and results
  • Encouraging participation and promotion of quality responsibilities amongst all employees and third parties through standards, education, training and coaching, supervision and effective communication.

At HDR UK, teamwork, engagement, ownership and support by everyone are vital for achieving our quality objectives. In this context, we are committed to providing the required leadership, management and resources and we will ensure that the Quality Policy is reviewed annually and communicated to employees and third parties.

At its core, Quality is first and foremost about trust in our outputs and services. But Quality is also more than this, it is about delivering what we promise in everything we do. Each and every one of us has the power to influence Quality and trust through how we work.

Meeting our commitment

Quality is the foundation of our Institute and is embedded in our mission and values. HDR UK is trusted by funders and the public to provide health data science, train health data scientists and provide health data research infrastructure and services. This trust is based upon our quality image and our reputation for consistently delivering high-quality outputs and services. This trust must be maintained and enhanced day after day. Every contract we manage, service we provide and relationship we develop has helped to shape this trust. At HDR UK, we are involved in and dedicated to achieving high Quality standards for our products and services through the application of the HDR UK Quality Management System (QMS). Fully aligned to ISO standards, our QMS is implemented across the organisation and verified by independent third-party certification bodies.

Scope

Bringing together the UK health data research sector to deliver high-impact research programmes that use health data at scale for trustworthy health data access. We do this through developing and delivering strategy and managing programmes to enable partners to access, analyse and interpret health data for research and training within the UK.

Outside of scope

Calibration of equipment, this is out of scope as research is not undertaken by HDR UK central staff.

Governance of Quality

Quality of the responsibility of all. The following groups provide governance support to oversee the management of quality at HDR UK.

  1. Audit and Risk Committee, a sub-committee of the Board of Trustees of HDR UK, provides Board-level oversight of the QMS. It receives reports from the Management Review Group and provides advice and feedback on progress and monitoring of the system.
  2. QMS Management Review Group meets up to three times per year to review the quality management system. It receives internal audit reports and identifies opportunities for continual improvement. The QMS Management Review Group is chaired by the Executive Director of Business Operations as the executive with overall responsibility for the quality management system. The Group also consists operational leaders from across HDR UK.

Identifying Quality Objectives

Quality objectives are proposed annually by the Management Review Group as part of the strategy development process and are approved by the Audit and Risk Committee. These objectives should be measurable so that we can accurately monitor progress over time.

The Management Review Group will analyse the output of internal audits to identify common themes. The Group also review how quality objectives have focused on different areas of the business over time. This is to identify if any areas have not recently been the focus on a quality objective.

Communicating the Quality Policy

This Quality Policy forms part of our suite of operating policies which are located on HDR UK’s shared drive for staff, who are also supported by training.

This policy is made available on our website for our stakeholders to ensure they understand and engage with HDR UK’s commitment to quality.