Scottish Family Health Study (SHFS) was funded (£4.6M) for 5 years by the Scottish Executive and Chief Scientist Office, Scotland. SHFS recognized that medical disorders of public health importance have a significant heritable component. The focus of SFHS included cancer, heart disease/stroke and mental health as well as a wide range of poorly managed or currently untreatable cases of ill health including asthma, bone fracture, dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, obesity and osteoporosis. SFHS focused on bringing together existing and complementary strengths in Scotland in the arena of genetics as applied to healthcare.

Scottish Health Informatics Platform for Research (SHIP): was funded (£3.5m) by the Wellcome Trust and the MRC in the UK. SHIP provided an e-Infrastructure across Scotland where access to clinical data for secondary uses was enabled. This infrastructure addressed increased public concern over privacy and more regulatory oversight of data provenance. The SHIP project culminated in the development of a significant clinical studies toolkit, a patient portal and image handling capacity as well as support for a generic infrastructure that allowed record linkage of anonymised national NHS datasets given appropriate permissions, and with vigorous, visible (overt) information governance.