UK Biobank Exemption (from the UKB-RAP by default) Policy

UK Biobank Exemptions (from the UKB-RAP by default) policy

This policy has been approved by the UK Biobank Access Committee.  Each application is considered by the UK Biobank Access and Scientific Teams, who in turn make a recommendation to the Access Committee, who then review the application. 

1. A researcher is required to make an application to UK Biobank for an exemption.  Any applications from researchers, who are in some way non-compliant with UK Biobank’s procedures and MTA (for example in the filing of annual reports) are rejected.

2. The researcher must set out the objective rationale for their exemption, including:

• The dataset required (which should be minimised where possible);
• Confirmation of data security arrangements; and
• The plans for uploading the completed analysis to the UKB-RAP.

3. Exemptions will be considered on the following basis:

• Lack of appropriate data tooling/applications/software available on the UKB-RAP;
• Insufficient compute power (for example availability of GPUs) available on the UKB-RAP; and
• Substantial cost (as a rough guide, substantive is taken to be in the ~£50,000 region) incurred by switching to the UKB-RAP.

Reasons not considered to be relevant include:

• requests for data harmonisation with external datasets that cannot be moved into UKB-RAP due to legal restrictions; and
• insufficient researcher funding.

4. The time period for an exemption is standardised: until the end of 2026 or until the project expires, whichever occurs first.   

5. Further, and depending on the nature of the data, there may be a location requirement to retain the data within a data environment which is geographically based within the UK/EEA.  In the event that the exemption data contains health record linkage data, it will be a mandatory location requirement that such data is retained within a data environment which is geographically based within the UK/EEA.