Gastroenterology has a huge number of datasets at trust level as well as nationally and internationally. There is a increasing impetus to link these datasets to power more conclusive studies. Inherent in this are a number of problems of data linkage, the two most significant of which are

1. Unifying the data standards and data types between individual fields- a simple example being are measurements being in the same units, is the data in numeric or text format etc.)

2. Patient confidentiality- resulting in anonymisation of individual datasets such that the linkage of datasets, if it relies on merging by hospital number for example, may nto be possible.

The gastroenterological datasets avaiable will be listed here and as we discover more they will be categorised further and instructions on their usage and how to access them will be made available