Secure research environments, without the infrastructure overhead.
Self-service, secure workspaces that give research and development teams access to sensitive data alongside the tooling to actually work with it, built on Microsoft's Azure Trusted Research Environment.
What it is
Somewhere to work with sensitive data, that IT doesn't have to hand-build each time.
A Trusted Research Environment gives research teams an isolated workspace with controlled access to a dataset and the tools to analyse it, instead of every project needing its own bespoke, hand-configured secure environment. Workspaces are provisioned on demand rather than requested and waited for, and access, data movement and cost all stay visible and governed throughout.
It’s built on Microsoft’s Azure Trusted Research Environment (Azure TRE), Microsoft’s own open-source accelerator for this exact problem, rather than a from-scratch platform, so the security and access-control foundations are Microsoft’s, with Bloom Health focused on making it usable for the sectors we work in.
Inside the platform
What's actually in a workspace
Self-service workspaces
Research teams can spin up their own isolated workspace on demand, without waiting on IT to provision infrastructure.
Microsoft Entra ID
Access is controlled through Entra ID, so permissions follow your organisation's existing identity and access setup.
Airlock data controls
Data moving in or out of a workspace passes through a review step, so sensitive datasets stay governed, not just walled off.
Pre-built templates
Ready-to-deploy tooling per workspace, including Windows/Linux virtual desktops, Azure ML with Jupyter and R Studio, and dev tools like Gitea.
Cost reporting
Usage and spend are visible per workspace, so research budgets don't disappear into shared infrastructure costs.
Extensible by design
Built as an accelerator, not a fixed product, so new workspace templates can be added as research needs change.
Who it's for
Anywhere sensitive data and outside collaborators need to meet safely.
Trusted Research Environments are used wherever teams need secure access to sensitive data alongside people who don’t sit inside the organisation’s own IT boundary: clinical and health records under review, aggregated social-care data being analysed by a partner, or a regulatory body examining evidence from the organisations it oversees. That maps closely onto who IO Analytics already works with: healthcare, social care, local government and regulatory bodies.
In practice
Already at work in healthcare, through AffyMedTech.
IO Analytics is the Scottish channel partner for AffyMedTech, a joint venture between Affidea and Vertice Medtec. AffyMedTech’s Lynx platform integrates with our Trusted Research Environment, giving healthcare providers a real, live example of what this environment supports, not just a hypothetical use case.
Interested in Trusted Research Environment?
We're bringing this to health and public-sector partners who need to work with sensitive data safely. Get in touch to talk about your project.