General Practice Research Database

The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) is an observational and interventional research service that operates as part of the UK Department of Health. It is jointly funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). CPRD is working closely with the extensive primary care, topic specific and comprehensive NIHR research networks and with the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care.

The programme that would develop into the current organisation was initially developed by an Essex general practitioner, Dr Alan Dean, to facilitate day-to-day management of his own general practice, in collaboration with IT staff at the BATA shoe factory in East Tilbury near to his practice. Early programmers included a Czech programmer Yan Boda. In 1987 a venture capital company was set up, named Value Added Information Medical Products Ltd (VAMP) to recruit other practices and form an information base. The early development team of three, Marcella Devenish (formerly a midwife), Philip Lee-Warren (formerly a Senior Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer), under the leadership of Kieran O'Mally, developed further the computerised system using the BOS Microcobol development environment. During this period the number of UK practices using the software product IGP (Integrated General Practice) expanded from a few hundred to over two and a half thousand.

In November 1993, its parent company was acquired by Reuters Health Information, which donated the database to the Department of Health in 1994, at which time it became General Practice Research Database (GPRD). Then the database was operated by the Office for National Statistics until 1999, at which point the Medicines Control Agency (MCA) took over. This agency became the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on 1 April 2003 following a merger with the Medical Devices Agency (MDA). Since then, use of the database has expanded within the UK and overseas. The GPRD was run as a sub-division of the MHRA.

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