Bennett Institute wins prestigious John Perry Prize for OpenSAFELY’s contributions to primary care computing and informatics

The Bennett Institute has been awarded this year’s John Perry Prize by the British Computer Society’s Primary Healthcare Specialist Group for its work on the development of the OpenSAFELY platform. The prize recognises outstanding contributions to primary care computing and informatics, including advances in research, software development and service improvement.

OpenSAFELY is an award-winning secure open analytics platform for NHS GP records. Since its development during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has transformed how routine GP data is used for research, service improvement and safer care.

Since 1985, the John Perry Prize has recognised outstanding contributions to the field of primary care computing or informatics. Last year’s winner was PRIMIS, who led the development of the nationally adopted PINCER safety intervention. Previous winners also included pioneers of digital patient records, Dr Amir Hannan and Dr Brian Fisher, among many others.

Professor Seb Bacon, Chief Technology Officer at the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science, said:

“We developed OpenSAFELY during the pandemic because we knew that open, transparent, and secure NHS data research had the potential to transform health research using primary care data at a national scale. Almost seven years later, we’re still at the forefront of open code and methods, and we’re seeing more and more people reuse code, pool knowledge and build on our work, in England and internationally.”

Anna Schultze, Senior Epidemiologist at the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science, said:

“OpenSAFELY changed the way we use NHS data for research, and showed that with the right infrastructure, we can protect patient privacy and work openly while delivering impactful research at speed. This prize also demonstrates the power of collaborative science: with the help of epidemiologists, software engineers and clinicians, we were able to carry out crucial research during the pandemic, and build an infrastructure that will continue to deliver life-saving research beyond it.”

To learn more about our work with big data, visit the Bennett Institute’s website, follow the Institute on LinkedIn and @bennettoxford.bsky.social (BlueSky), and sign up to receive notifications of the latest blog posts and newsletter updates.