The UK’s largest ever health research programme, Our Future Health, which will create one of the most detailed pictures we’ve ever had of people’s health, is to use the Microsoft Cloud to securely store the huge amounts of data needed for the programme.

The programme will look at some of the leading causes of death and serious illness in the UK, including dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and stroke.

Our Future Health has now chosen Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to enable the information collected from the volunteers to be processed for research purposes, and underpin websites and apps used by medical teams.

All of this will be contained in a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) provided by DNAnexus, which will sit in a UK Azure region. The TRE allows researchers to securely access and analyse data using a variety of bioinformatics and biomedical research tools, including genomic analysis.

DNAnexus and Microsoft will work together, however as with any project of this nature, Microsoft and DNAnexus will not have access to any of the data in the programme itself. The information will be de-identified, encrypted, stored and managed securely in the UK, in compliance with all applicable data protection laws and UK government policies for data protection.