A decade has passed and the `NHS National Programme for IT’ has ended.  At the beginning of the decade, the previous administration captured the zeitgeist by refreshing Timbuk 3s refrain ‘The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades’. All of us believed in the goal of health transformation through the use of technology and high quality health related data. Most of us had forgotten that Timbuk 3’s original song described nuclear Armageddon. In spite of all that has happened, the ten years of data collection in the national programme have confirmed many things to me, all of which make me optimistic about the next ten years.

The first thing is that a national vision of health and health service provision remains one of the unique characteristics of our nation. I think we will look back at the ten years of the national programme as the development phase of a generational programme to help citizens connect to their health through personal data collection and the democratisation of data for population health. The creation of the national spine with N3 as a ‘connectosome’ for everyone has been key to learning about what can and cannot be done with national databases. One of the most important lessons is that to make big data work it is absolutely necessary to have ‘big consent’. Read more.

By Tim Kelsey, National Director of Patients and Information,
NHS Commissioning Board

In 1859, Florence Nightingale wrote Notes on Hospitals. It proposed that the success of a hospital could be assessed by the number of patients its doctors avoidably killed in the course of trying to save their lives. Death rates, she concluded, were a vital measure of quality.

Nearly 150 years later, the first ever Good Hospital Guide was published in this country. It demonstrated that you could be the same person with the same condition and walk into one hospital rather than another and be at 76 per cent greater risk of death as a result. That variation has reduced in the last decade - a consequence in large part of putting the data into the public domain for the first time. Read more.

The Open Data movement has the power to radically transform information and its part in patient care. Work being undertaken by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) is a key enabler of that change writes the centre’s medical director Dr Mark Davies.

Whilst will continue to meet the appetite for high quality information that is so integral to effective decision-making, the Open Data movement is a catalyst to unlocking further benefits of existing and emerging data.

It has the potential to create a new level of dynamism in information and to a wider, more diverse audience than ever before.  A key aspect of the wider transparency agenda, the movement redefines the social contract between the NHS and the public it serves and gives clear traction to placing patient opinion and access to data firmly at the core of activity. Read more.

By Peter Knight, Deputy Director, Head of Research Information and Intelligence, Department of Health

Data is an important component of life sciences research. By supporting the researcher to identify topics, and aid in the study of an identified area this can lead to better outcomes for patients. Open Data plays an important role in life sciences research, when it is combined with an existing research cohort it can provide insight that otherwise would not have been seen.

An example is linking to the published prescribing data from the Health and Social Care Information Centre with a study in heart disease. This can show prescribing tends by area, which when linked to a consenting research cohort of patients can provide insight into the effectiveness of a treatment. Read more.

The National Information Governance Board (NIGB) is committed to communicating with and actively supporting the Information Governance (IG) communities in health and social care by providing expert advice and guidance on the interpretation of policies, guidelines and legislation.

A key focus of the NIGB has been to support the changes recommended by The Power of Information and the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and help organisations through transition. It is of particular importance for both emerging and existing organisations to have access to sufficient IG advice and support during the transition period to ensure the changes do not adversely affect information governance standards in both the closing and emerging organisations. Read more.