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Background Hospital administrative data, such as those provided by the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database in England, are increasingly being used for research and quality improvement. To date, no study has tried to quantify and examine trends in the use of HES for research purposes. Objective To examine trends in the use of HES data for research. Methods Publications generated from the use of HES data were extracted from PubMed and analysed. Publications from 1996 to 2014 were then examined further in the Science Citation Index of the Thompson Scientific Institute for Science Information (Web of Science) for details of research specialty area. Results 520 studies, categorised into 44 specialty areas, were extracted from PubMed. The review showed an increase in publications over the 19-year period with an average of 27 publications per year, however, with the majority of output observed in the …