Siloed data holding back coordinated health responses

The NHS’ inability to gather and analyse the vast amount of data it captures all in one place is preventing the service from effectively responding to a variety of complex and shifting healthcare demands, according to digital health experts.

During Digital Health Rewired on 15 and 16 March 2022, an exhibition and conference event organised by Digital Health, the experts also claimed that ending the siloed and fragmented collection and use of data throughout the NHS is key to managing resource allocation, which in turn will help to reduce health inequalities.

They further added that this will be especially important as the NHS enters a period of recovery, but that privacy and governance concerns still need to be addressed to allow for more extensive data sharing.

Speaking about the use of data during the early months of the pandemic, NHS Improvement’s director of insight and data platform Ayub Bhayat said the disparate nature of data collection within the health service meant it was not able to respond as quickly as the situation demanded.

“Information was being held in spreadsheets by disparate organisations and was being duplicated and rapidly becoming outdated…[leading to] an incomplete understanding of the situation,” he said.

“We needed to create a real-time shared version of the truth, a common operating picture – our response to this was to establish a national NHS Covid-19 data store, which brings together multiple data sources from across the health and care system in England into a single secure, cloud-based location.”

He added that as a result of the datastore, which included dashboards and workflow tools to further analyse the data collected, decision-making capabilities in the NHS were greatly enhanced.

“This enabled us to understand how the virus is spreading and was spreading at the time; identify risks to particularly vulnerable populations; proactively increase health and care resources in emerging hotspots; ensure that critical equipment is supplied to the facility with the greatest need; and divert patients to facilities that are best able to care for them based on demand, resources and staffing capacity,” he said, adding that the NHS must build on what it has learnt using data and analytics during Covid to drive collective recovery and transformation.

“There’s no doubt that our NHS has had been under extreme pressure…dealing with the pandemic and its effects has inevitably had an impact on the amount planned care has been able to provide. This in turn means longer waits for many, many people.

“If we are to effectively manage the waiting lists, then Trusts need an accurate picture of who is waiting and how long, as well as the ability to better plan and manage the data capacity to optimise the use of available resources.”

Tim Ferris, director of transformation at NHS England, also stressed the impact the pandemic has had in showing healthcare professionals the power of using data to address health issues.  

Using the UK’s vaccine deployment as an example, Ferris added: “If you are collecting data about the delivery of a service in near real time, you can quickly spot areas where patients aren't being as well served as they need to be and pivot.”

Ferris also said that, given the advances: “In our ability to manipulate data and bring data from all over the world…data should be having a much greater impact on the delivery of healthcare.”

CEO of NHS Confederation Matthew Taylor added that the use of high quality, real-time population health data will help “to shift from a system that responds to demand to a system that genuinely responds to need”, and that the NHS’ implementation of Integrated Care Systems (ICS) has the potential to “help create that enabling environment” needed to leverage data effectively.

On ICS’ use of data, others said that strong local leadership will be needed to ensure the workforce has the necessary skills and capabilities to ensure healthcare is provided in a coordinated and effective way.

“I would sternly encourage digital and data leaders to look at the costings you are putting into those plans [for staff and skills] that will support the ambition,” said Ruth Holland, deputy chief information officer at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. “ICS’ will stand and fall on their data capability in 10 years’ time.”

She added that training in data and analytics skills will also need to embedded throughout the wider NHS workforce, as without it the effectiveness of any new technologies or digital processes will be limited.