Sharing sensitive health data is now faster and more flexible with SURE

News article

11 June 2020

Sharing sensitive health data is now faster and more flexible with SURE

The Secure Unified Research Environment (SURE) is Australia’s leading health research platform and has recently undergone a range of new upgrades. Here’s how SURE can help you:

Highly secure data management you can trust

SURE is a high-powered computing environment that gives researchers direct access to linked health and human services data including data on the use of government services, hospitals and GPs.

Independently managed by the Sax Institute, SURE is now trusted and used by 29 data custodians, including the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and the Australian Taxation Office. There are also 450 researchers actively using the facility for diverse research projects that tackle health issues such as cancer, diabetes and mental health.

When data is made available within SURE to researchers, it is done so in a safe environment that satisfies data governance and security requirements to known and consistent standards.

Protection against unauthorised use

Data in SURE is stored on Sax Institute-operated infrastructure in Australia. SURE is also accredited and regularly audited under ISO27001:2013 to provide data custodians with the utmost confidence in security management practices.

New servers that conduct analysis in half the time

We’ve recently upgraded to powerful new servers that are drastically improving processing times*. Researchers can now expect to conduct their analysis 50% faster than a year ago. And thanks to our new server environment, virtual machines used by researchers have been substantially improved with up to 36 CPUs and 128GB of RAM available for SURE users.

Constant upgrades to keep pace with Australian researchers

SURE is continually responding to the needs of custodians and users. We’re currently developing new solutions for artificial intelligence analysis and hybrid-cloud computing, all of which will provide more flexibility and options for analysing data. These exciting new upgrades will be available to researchers very soon.

Competitive and great value for money

SURE’s fees are highly competitive and designed for all levels of research. We offer a low annual fee for data custodians, and customised fee packages for researchers, so all parts of the research community can access safe, secure health data.

SURE is a flexible and responsive solution for sharing data with the research community. Talk to us about tailoring SURE to your requirements. Contact us on SURE-Admin@saxinstitute.org.au or call 02 9195 6060.

SURE was developed by the Sax Institute, and is operated as part of the Population Health Research Network (PHRN) with funding from the Australian Government National Collaborative Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and the NSW Government.

*SURE’s upgraded servers were purchased with a NSW NCRIS Co-Investment grant from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment through the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer.