BROCADE study

This BROCADE study leaflet is relevant to you if you have received a breast cancer diagnosis at the Breast Unit, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH NHS FT.) This currently covers those who have had treatment in the last 10 years but may be extended in the future.

The BROCADE study involves the assessment of breast cancer patient outcomes for those who have had cancer treatment in the last 10 years, at the Breast Unit, CUH NHS FT. For this study, Prof Jean Abraham’s team (from the Precision Breast Cancer Institute (PBCI)) will request the anonymised patient outcome data from NHS England, who hold records from the national cancer registry, and other related databases. This will include information about your cancer, and the treatment that you had. Patient identifiable data, such as name, NHS number and date of birth, will be removed before the data is transferred from NHS England to the PBCI team.

CUH patients, who previously consented to our research studies, have already given their informed consent for anonymised data use in such research studies.

For CUH patients who have not participated in research (and from whom we don’t have the consent), we will be seeking authorisation from the Confidentiality Advisory Group (opens in a new tab) (CAG) to get their data from NHS England. Patients who allow for their data to be used in this research study need not take any action.

If you have received a cancer diagnosis and would like more information about this study, or would like your data excluded from this study, please contact the BROCADE team by email or telephone on 01223 348933 or by post (BROCADE Team, Precision Breast Cancer Institute, Box 97. Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 0QQ).

The CUH Cambridge Central Informatics (CCI) team is permitted to access patient identifiable data. They will send the relevant list of patients to NHS England, for this study. The BROCADE study team at the PBCI will never have access to this patient identifiable data.

The anonymised data received by the BROCADE study team will be securely stored in the University of Cambridge ‘Secure Research Computing Platform’. This is an International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 27001 certified storage which provides a secure, isolated, and controlled environment for data storage, processing and analysis.