Data Protection

GDPR Transparency Statement

(Updated March 2024)

The University of Oxford was the sponsor for this study based in the United Kingdom. However, the Chief Investigator of the OPAL study (Professor Sallie Lamb) is now based at the University of Exeter and researchers within her team at the University of Exeter will help to analyse the information collected during this study. The University of Exeter is now the study sponsor. The sponsor is the organisation that takes overall responsibility for the study. This change of study sponsorship has been approved by the Research Ethics Committee that approved the study. 

The study is still being run by the OPAL study team based at the University of Oxford. They will use information from you in order to undertake this study and will act as a data controller for this study along with the University of Exeter. This means that they are responsible for looking after your information and using it properly. 

You will have received your final OPAL questionnaire. The last stage of information collection is for the OPAL study team to get information regarding your hospital service usage. If you change your mind about us having this information, then you can withdraw your consent for us to collect this information at any time. You can do this by contacting the OPAL team using the contact details provided below. 

Your rights to access, change or move your information we have collected prior to your decision to withdraw are limited, as we need to manage your information in specific ways for the research to be reliable and accurate. If you withdraw from the study, we will keep the information about you that we have already obtained. To safeguard your rights, we will use the minimum personally identifiable information possible.

The OPAL study team will use your name, date of birth, NHS number and contact details to contact you about the research study if required. The only people in the University of Oxford who will have access to information that identifies you will be people who need to contact you to; send your follow-up questionnaires, send information on the study results, or to audit the data collection process. The University of Oxford will keep identifiable information about you for five years after the study has finished. This information will not be shared with the University of Exeter. 

So that we can collect the final information required for this study, researchers at the University of Oxford and University of Exeter will collect information about you for this research study from your GP practice and from NHS England. We will request details of any NHS hospital service usage (including A&E, outpatient appointments in-patient stays) during the time you took part in the study from NHS England. Information about health care usage of primary care services (such as seeing your GP and medicines prescribed) will be collected from a primary care research database. GP practices across England contribute to different research databases. Data is provided through EMIS and Wellbeing software. Data is held securely and anonymously and is under strict regulation for use and purpose from NHS England. You can check with your GP practice whether they are part of a primary care data repository. You can also opt out from sharing your information at any time by contacting your GP.

To ensure that any data we collect from either your GP and/or NHS England is matched to the correct participant record, the OPAL study team from the University of Oxford will provide your GP and NHS England with the following information that we hold about you:

  • Your OPAL study ID
  • Name
  • Current Address 
  • Date of Birth
  • NHS Number
  • Gender
  • Date you joined the study

All transfers of data between the University of Exeter, the University of Oxford, your GP and/or NHS England will be sent securely using encrypted data files. Once NHS England have successfully used the personal identifiable data that we provide to link to your health record, NHS England will remove the identifiers (NHS Number, Surname, Forename, Date of Birth and provide the OPAL study team with pseudonymised Hospital Episode Statistics, Emergency Care, and Mortality data. Any primary care research database will use the same procedures to provide information about your use of primary care services. The information researchers receive to carry out data analyses will not identify you and they will not be able to find out your name, NHS number or contact details. Upon safe receipt of this information only approved researchers from the University of Oxford or the University of Exeter will be able access this data. 

Any further updates on how we process or look after your data will be posted on this website.  

The contact details for the study remain the same. If you have any queries regarding the above information or the study in general, you can contact the OPAL study team at the University of Oxford using the details below:

Email: opal@ndorms.ox.ac.uk     

Telephone: 0800 085 3922 (available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm)

Postal Address: OPAL Research team, Botnar Research Centre, University of Oxford, Windmill Road, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LD