London CCGs urged to embrace NHS digital data-sharing scheme ‘even if all you can do is create a PDF’
London Health and Care Information Exchange is also developing offer online accounts for patients
As it prepares to launch across the capital next month, the London Health and Care Information Exchange (HCIE) has claimed that all NHS entities can benefit from the data-sharing programme – “even if the only thing you can do is create a PDF”.
The scheme is also in the early stages of creating a platform giving citizens an online account through which to view and manage how their information is shared.
HCIE is creating a centralised information exchange platform for all of London’s 7,000 or so NHS organisations to manage their information-sharing agreements, and move data between parties. The programme, which was first unveiled last year and is due to launch in full next month, is intended to replace about 30 smaller-scale local schemes.
The Healthy London Partnership, which is running the HCIE initiative, claims that the effectiveness of the existing roster of local data-sharing platforms is limited by the fact that many patients receive care from various providers across different parts of the city – that likely do not share information with one another.
Related content
- Ambulance data-sharing and smart speakers for carers receive chunk of £5m Welsh innovation fund
- NHS England moots regional-level data collection to support national analytics
- MPs and experts call for more digital health records as NHS mail goes undelivered
HCIE is intended to allow London’s 32 clinical commissioning groups (CCG) to manage their existing data-sharing agreements and forge new ones. The platform will also make it easier to create and maintain a wide variety of arrangements with subtly differing levels of openness, according to Mike Part, head of digital for the London region at NHS England.
“This architecture allows you to control at quite a granular level what data you are sharing, and with whom. You can switch off sharing with [certain] people,” he said.
Part added the scheme is not in the business of “creating a data lake”, but rather wishes to provide a “strategic platform” for NHS bodies to share their own data with one another. And even the most digital-sceptic of CCGs can benefit from HCIE, he said.
“We are trying to get data to move around the system. How do we show the transfer of care?,” Part said. “If you a legacy organisation using legacy standards – even if the only thing you can do is create a PDF – we can move that around for you.”
A scheme offering patients their own online account to see how their information is being shared is currently in alpha stage, he added. The system will use GOV.UK’s Verify identity-assurance technology.
“We are trying to make it as user-friendly as possible,” he said. “[We are examining] how do we build trust with the patients? Lots of people are concerned about information-sharing.”
Share this page
Tags
Categories
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM READERS
Please login to post a comment or register for a free account.
Related Articles
Public counters across the UK are also to remain closed but government body indicates no jobs will be lost
More than three million people visited government’s website as Boris Johnson informed the country of new restrictions
Trustworthiness and innovation of programmes is praised by judges
New Hermes platform is intended to provide a ‘modular, scalable solution’
Related Sponsored Articles
Ed Stainton, Director of Major Government at BT, on accelerating initiatives to drive growth through responsible, inclusive, and sustainable technology