BINOCARD has approval from the NHS Health Research Authority (HRA) as a research database (REC reference: 16/EM/0440). The approval is reviewed every 5 years.
The creation of BINOCARD involves linking historical congenital anomaly registration data to HES (Hospital Episode Statistics), Civil Registrations data and NPD (National Pupil Database) data. For the purpose of performing this one-off linkage, BINOCARD has Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG) support to continue processing identifiable data under Section 251 of the NHS Act 2006. Once data linkage is complete and data quality has been checked, all personal identifiers will be deleted, thus making BINOCARD a de-identified research database.
Download REC letters of favourable opinion 2018 (amendment) 2017 2016
Current CAG approval:
Download CAG approval (SGUL) until June 2021
Past approvals (for reference only):
Download CAG letter of support 2015
Download CAG extension until September 2019