The Department of Health and Social Care has published a new health in data strategy Data Saves Lives: Reshaping Health and Social Care with Data
Patients will have more access to their GP information via the NHS App, as well as more control over how their data is used, including simpler opt-out processes.
Secure Data Environments will allow researchers to access data in a secure manner, allowing them to drive innovation and provide cutting-edge patient care.
The NHS’s efforts to remove the Covid backlog will be aided by the use of data to promote greater efficiency.
£25 million towards rapid digitalization of social care to satisfy a promise to have computerized care records in place for at least 80% of social care providers by March 2024.
Following the release of a new data strategy for health and social care, millions of patients will benefit from speedier, more creative treatment and diagnosis.
Our new data in health strategy, Data Saves Lives: Reshaping Health and Social Care with Data, was released today (Monday 13) and focuses on seven principles for harnessing the data-driven power and innovation seen during the pandemic to drive health and care transformation, creating a secure and privacy-preserving system that delivers for both patients and professionals.
The strategy lays out ambitious reforms for the health and care industry, including altering the way data is used to promote breakthroughs and economies, as well as addressing the Covid backlog and building a future-ready system.
Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid is scheduled to announce the policy during London Tech Week’s HealthTech Summit, saying:
We are embarking on a major reform agenda to ensure that the NHS is prepared to tackle the problems of 2048, not 1948, when it was founded.
I set a number of ambitious goals for digital transformation in health and care earlier this year, and we’re making fantastic progress […]
This historic document will examine how we may build on this momentum and apply the lessons learned to the difficulties ahead of us, including as addressing the Covid backlog and implementing critical health-care reforms.
It demonstrates how data will be used to better all aspects of health and social care.
The following are the data strategy’s guiding principles:
- Increasing trust in the use of data in health and care systems
- Providing health-care providers with the information they require to give the best possible care
Improving adult social care data - Providing data to local decision-makers
- Providing data to researchers so they can develop life-changing therapies and diagnostics
- Collaboration with partners to develop health and care advances
- Creating the necessary technical infrastructure
- Secure Data Environments will be the norm for NHS and adult social care organizations providing access to de-identified data for research, giving patients
- more confidence than ever that their personal information is protected. This implies that personal data will never leave a secure server and will only be used for research purposes that have been agreed upon.
Trusted Research Environments (TREs) – a type of Secure Data Environment – will be built following a £200 million investment to better enable researchers to safely access linked NHS data while maintaining the highest standards of privacy and security.
This would allow the NHS to deliver cutting-edge life-saving therapies and diagnoses to patients more quickly through clinical trials, as well as support more diverse and inclusive research to address entrenched health inequities, allowing the NHS to move faster through the Covid backlog.
Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is anticipated to speak at the HealthTech summit:
We will ensure that researchers and innovators have secure and efficient access to data.
We have some of the top research institutes and colleges in the world, a robust life sciences sector, and a booming HealthTech industry in this country.
The possibilities are endless when this innovation meets the wisdom of health and care data.
The data strategy also includes major commitments to provide patients more access to and control over their data, such as streamlining data sharing opt-out processes and improving access to GP records in the NHS App by giving patients access to their most up-to-date health information by November 2022.
By December 2023, additional enhancements will be accessible, including the ability to more quickly request historical information such as diagnoses, blood test results, and immunisations.
The public will also be consulted on a new “data contract,” which will outline how the healthcare system would utilize patient data and what rights the public has.
Throughout the pandemic, the use of the NHS App has increased dramatically. The NHS App already has 28 million users, and figures reveal that in April alone, 1.7 million patients were able to request repeat prescriptions, 150,000 primary care appointments were managed, and five million people checked their GP record, saving valuable clinician time.
The strategy commits to a target of 75 percent of the adult population being enrolled to use the NHS App by March 2024, with the goal of making it a one-stop shop for health needs.
Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is anticipated to speak at the HealthTech summit:
We’ll boost data trust, which is the money that allows data-driven technologies to function.
We’ll collaborate with the public, including health and care workers, to create a new data contract that outlines how we’ll utilize health and care data and what the public may expect.
This will provide the option of opting out of data sharing. Because, despite the fact that the vast majority of people want their data to be used for good, we will make the opt-out process more straightforward and transparent.
The government’s ambition to integrate health and social care relies heavily on data. The strategy describes how linked care records would enable smoother transitions between NHS treatments and social care, including faster discharge from hospital, freeing up valuable space, after a £150 million funding commitment to support rapid digitalization in the adult social care sector.
Only 45 percent of social care providers use a digital social care record, and 23% of care home employees do not have constant access to the internet at work. The data plan reaffirms the goal of having a digitized care record in place for at least 80% of social care providers by March 2024.
To help with this, £25 million will be made available in 2022/23 to increase investment and implementation of digital social care technology across England, including the adoption of Digital Social Care Records (DSCR) to ensure data is captured at the point of care and can be shared between care settings.
Remote monitoring tools, for example, are already being successfully used to provide more targeted care. The government’s digital home care projects have used remote monitoring to support over 740,000 people receiving home care, including residents of care homes, improving their health outcomes and reducing the burden on the NHS, while also assisting clinicians in their efforts to combat covid.
Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is anticipated to speak at the HealthTech summit:
When it comes to digital transformation, we must be open and honest about the fact that social care lags behind the NHS.
Because our social care system houses some of our society’s most vulnerable citizens, the opportunities available are even larger. This Strategy demonstrates our commitment to bridging the digital divide between the NHS and social care.
The digital health and care plan, which combines the government’s ambitions for digital transformation in health and social care with an ambitious implementation plan, will be released shortly after the data strategy.
Additional quotes include:
The NHS Transformation Digital Policy Unit’s Joint Head, Simon Madden, said:
This Data Strategy aims to re-establish the public’s trust in the use of health and care data.
The idea that health data is first and foremost patient data underpins a major goal of building and maintaining public confidence.
Simon Bolton, CEO of NHS Digital, said:
The Data Saves Lives Strategy is a big step forward in helping us to complete the NHS’s digital transformation, where data and technology enable a future-ready health and care system.
Better data access will be critical to the NHS’s recovery, and patient trust and confidence will be critical. We’re committed to giving patients more say over how data is used to improve health and care services, as well as increasing transparency.
Our Trusted Research Environment is already helping to save lives through clinical research and innovation, and we’re working on a new and improved National TRE service with better accessibility and the highest levels of privacy and security.
Professor Ben Goldacre, director of the Bennett Institute at the University of Oxford and author of the current Goldacre Review, said:
The untapped potential of NHS data is enormous. This is a significant document because it goes beyond aphorisms to provide crucial technical information.
The adoption of Trusted Research Environments, in particular, represents a watershed moment.
TREs gain public trust by demonstrating that they protect patients’ privacy and by publishing full audits of every data usage. They also increase efficiency by allowing all users working with the same datasets to use the same data curation and analysis tools.
The small number of secure platforms described in this document will finally allow all patient data to be used for research and to improve NHS care. If done correctly, they will overcome historical privacy concerns while driving faster, more reliable, secure, and efficient data utilization from more teams than ever before.
Sir John Bell expressed himself thus:
We’ve demonstrated with Covid that we have some of the best data in the world, but it needs to be integrated across all parts of care in order to deliver significant advantages to patients and the NHS.
The framework for our data assets to be productively utilised, increasing all aspects of care, is provided by our data strategy, ‘Data Saves Lives.’ Every year, it will actually save thousands of lives.
Sir Martin Landray, University of Oxford Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and co-leader of the RECOVERY trial, said:
Any high-quality health and social-care system must have information on the right patients, at the right time, and accessible to the appropriate individuals.
I notice this need every time I meet a patient in one of my clinics as a doctor. And as a researcher, I understand how critical this is in our quest to understand the causes and consequences of illness, as well as how to improve them – whether it’s studying disparities in health and health care, or, in my own field, conducting clinical trials to determine which treatments provide true benefits to patients.
The lessons learned from trials like RECOVERY will be just as important in the future for other major causes of illness, such as severe influenza, heart disease, common cancer, depression, and dementia.
The essential task of organizing and implementing clinical trials that drive improvements for those substantial burdens for patients, their families, and the NHS will require careful use of health data, not only from hospitals but from across the primary and social care system. The report Data Saves Lives is a significant step in that direction.