# Accredited trusted research environments with curated cancer tables

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-data-accredited-tre-network/  
OnCo record `idea-data-accredited-tre-network` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Secure online workrooms where approved researchers can analyse cancer records without downloading them, with the data already cleaned and organised for cancer questions.

## Summary

Trusted research environments (TREs) under the Five Safes model are now the default in the UK (NHS Secure Data Environments, OpenSAFELY) and emerging elsewhere. What is missing for oncology is curation: standardised, documented cancer tables (diagnosis, stage, treatment lines, response, death) refreshed on a schedule, so every study does not rebuild them. The proposal funds a small curation team per TRE and an accreditation standard for cancer-ready TREs.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Curated cancer tables in a TRE reduce analyst time per study by more than half and increase reproducibility across studies using the same derivation code.
- Rationale: OpenSAFELY showed that shared, versioned derivation code and a fixed environment produce fast, reproducible analyses at national scale during COVID-19; oncology has no equivalent curated layer.
- Proposed test: Give two analyst teams the same question, one in a TRE with curated tables and one with raw tables; measure time to answer and agreement of results. Repeat for five questions.
- Maturity: being-tested-at-scale
- Actor: data

## Sources

- OpenSAFELY: https://www.opensafely.org/

## Connected records

- fronts: [AI & Computation](https://onco.cc/fronts/ai-computation/)
- terms: [Real-world evidence](https://onco.cc/terms/real-world-evidence/)
- bottlenecks: [Data silos](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-data-silos/), [Preclinical results do not reproduce](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/)

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