The key points of the MRC/Wellcome Trust data sharing policy will be followed.40 41 Dissemination This paper describes the protocol for the development of SID-Cymru, and the research opportunities available from an electronic

case–control study of suicides within a whole population. SID-Cymru will have selleck chemicals the ability to link suicide cases anonymously to primary and secondary health information along with other social care data, allowing us to review each case’s journey through these data sets. The establishment of SID-Cymru and exploration of the linkage methodologies will improve our understanding of those who complete suicide (particularly those not known to mental health services) and will be used to inform service planning and policy decision making and implementation. It will help identify key opportunities and settings for prevention of this tragic event. By so doing, SID-Cymru will join other international databases of suicide research and provide a platform for further investigation and data linkages. In order for SID-Cymru to become a functional resource it is important to be aware of the limits of health data available; though widely used in research,

and offering a broad range of information about treatment and associated conditions, there are issues relating to determining the quality of patient records, the completeness of data available and any conclusions that may be drawn from them, perhaps particularly concerning primary care records.42 That is, working with routinely collected data presented in its ‘raw’ format, where duplicates, missing and erroneous entries are common occurrences, requires a certain level of database analysis skills. While some such administrative-based/system-based

recording issues are easy to identify and account for in individual data sets, it is not always apparent what is correct and what is erroneous at the combined level. Indeed, this problem is confounded when linkage of data reveals conflicting information causing routine data to appear inaccessible and Batimastat attempts at linkage discouraged. Thus, a secondary aim for SID-Cymru is to share the skills developed as part of establishing a suicide database, which can aid colleagues who may lack such analytical expertise and foster greater multidisciplinary collaborations and advance suicide research. The UK has a strong presence in the form of a wide range of publications and expertise relating to suicide research. Successful and dedicated Suicide Research Centres exist in Bristol, Manchester and Oxford,43–45 and Scotland recently started work on a ‘ScotSID’.