The NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) is software that will sit across NHS trusts and integrated care systems enabling NHS organisations to bring together operational data – currently stored in separate systems – to support staff to access the information they need in one safe and secure environment. This could be the number of beds in a hospital, the size of waiting lists for elective care services, or the availability of medical supplies.

The NHS FDP is a series of separate data platforms, that we call ‘instances’. Every hospital trust and integrated care board (ICB) (on behalf of their integrated care system (ICS)) will have their own instance of the NHS FDP, these are called local instances. This makes it easier for health and care organisations to work together, compare data, analyse it at different geographic, demographic and organisational levels and share and spread new effective digital solutions. 

NHS England is responsible for a national instance of the NHS FDP.

Each NHS organisation with an instance of the NHS FDP will have the ability to connect and share information between them when it’s helpful and where legal data sharing agreements are in place. For example, to discharge a patient from hospital into a care setting.

The NHS FDP is not a data collection; it is software that will help to connect disparate sets of data and allow them to be used more effectively for care.

The NHS is made up of multiple organisations that use data every day to manage patient care and plan services. Historically, it has been held in different systems that do not speak to each other, creating burden for staff and delays to patient care. It also makes it difficult to work at scale and share information to support patient care or improvements to care.

Better use of data brings big benefits for patients by ensuring more joined up care, greater choice and improved health outcomes, and ultimately saving lives.

Feedback from patients has shown that we need to make it easier for staff to access the information they need, freeing up time to invest in delivering the best care possible for patients and facilitating the rollout of innovations taking place across the healthcare system.

The NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) will provide software to link these NHS trusts and regional systems and give us a consistent technical means of linking data that is already collected for patient care. Clinicians will easily have access to the information they need to do their job – in one place – freeing up time spent on administrative tasks and enabling them to deliver the most appropriate care for patients.

Information about the procurement of the NHS Federated Data Platform, and other associated procurements can be found on NHS England’s website.

NHS organisations hold different types of data:

• operational information like the number of beds in a trust and what percentage are occupied, as well as aggregate data, such as a count of the total number of patients in a hospital or de-identified individual-level data, which is data about an individual which can’t identify that person. This information is often held in multiple clinical IT systems.
• confidential information that identifies a patient, including information about their medical condition or treatment. Some of this information is referred to as special category data and requires additional security when being used.

The Federated Data Platform (FDP) will allow NHS organisations to access both these types of data, where lawfully appropriate, and combine it with other data to analyse multiple data sources in one place.

The new software will use data that the NHS already collects and uses. It will securely bring together information for example from hospital health records, waiting lists, and theatre and staff rosters to better manage patient care.

Examples of how this will benefit patients can be found on the NHS England website.

The are no plans to include any identifiable sexual health data in the NHS Federated Data Platform.

There are no plans initially to collect any new data. Existing data will be accessible when needed by approved individuals.

Any future use of the platform to collect new data would follow NHS England’s strict governance processes.

Every trust and integrated care system, will have their own platform, with the capability to connect and share information between them where this is helpful. This could include the number of beds in a hospital, the size of waiting lists for elective care services, staff rosters, or the availability of medical supplies.

The NHS FDP will provide Trusts and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) on behalf of ICSs with a set of core capabilities and nationally developed products to support five key NHS priorities along with NHS England’s objective to improve services:

1. Elective recovery – to get patients treated as quickly as possible, reducing the backlog of people waiting for appointments or treatments, including maximising capacity, supporting patient readiness and using innovation to streamline care.
2. Care coordination (Joining up care) – to ensure that health and care organisations all have access to the information they need to support the patient, enabling care to be coordinated across NHS services.
3. Vaccination and immunisation – to ensure that there is fair and equal access, and uptake of vaccinations across different communities.
4. Population health management (Planning NHS services) – to help local trusts, Integrated Care Boards (on behalf of the integrated care systems) and NHS England proactively plan services that meet the needs of their population.
5. Supply chain management (Getting the best value for the NHS) – to help the NHS put resources where they are needed most and buy smarter so that we get the best value for money.

A suite of nationally commissioned products will sit under each of the use cases.  A product is a software solution to address a particular NHS need, for example a patient discharge product which brings together data to help support discharge teams in hospitals get patients the right care in the right place.

The NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) will improve patient care by bringing together the information needed to plan and deliver care and reduce administrative burden on staff.

The NHS Federated Data Platform Programme has been piloting initial products to explore the ways in which delivery of care can be improved via the FDP. The sites supporting these pilots have seen list sizes reduce and waiting times fall, meaning patients are treated faster. Additionally, discharge delays have reduced, enabling patients to leave hospital and get home sooner, and people are having to wait less time to receive a diagnosis.

For example, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust has used new software in its gynaecology department to track patients with suspected cancer through to diagnosis and first treatment, which has reduced the waiting time for a first appointment by an average of two days and cut the overall time to diagnosis. That means two days less that patients spent worrying and waiting to find out what the next steps in their treatment will be.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust is using software to monitor all admitted patients and assess any potential barriers to discharge. The system has freed up almost 10 hours of clinician time each week and resulted in patients going home faster, with long stays (over 21 days) falling by more than a third (36%).

National rollout of the Federated Data Platform will enable patients and clinicians across the country to benefit from these advances.

The FDP will:

• connect teams and organisations who need to work together to provide patient care
• help local teams better prioritise waiting lists, manage theatre capacity and identify their staffing needs
• help local health and care teams to understand the health of the people in their community, and what preventions and services might support those people
• make it easier to see where critical supplies are, how much is available, and where there are shortages
• reduce the reporting burden on frontline staff.
• enable NHS England to improve services to patients and plan services for the NHS

You can read more about the benefits for patients in the published case studies.

No further uses will be allowed without further engagement with public, patient and stakeholder assurance and advisory groups; this includes the FDP Data Governance Group who have responsibility for the review and approval of all products and non-compliance with the Data Security and Protection Toolkit.

Any additional use must be supported by clear legal reasoning and accompanying Data Protection Impact Assessment, which is a legal requirement under the UKGDPR Article 35 to help identify and minimise any data protection risks.

Access to data must have an explicit aim to benefit patients and/or the NHS in England. Access to NHS health and social care data within the NHS Federated Data Platforms will be carefully controlled. Only authorised users will be granted access to data for approved purposes. The supplier will not control the data in the platform, nor will they be permitted to access, use or share it for their own purposes.

The supplier of the NHS Federated Data Platform will only operate under the instruction of the NHS when processing data on the platform. The supplier will not control the data in the platform and will not be the data controller. The contract has strict stipulations about confidentiality, and there is governance in place to monitor delivery and usage of the FDP.

Only authorised users will be granted access to data for approved purposes, for example, NHS staff and those supporting them, such as administrators, bed managers or care coordinators, and staff in social care supporting the move from hospital care. Every hospital trust and ICB (on behalf of their ICS) who has their own instance of the NHS FDP, will have complete control over who has access to their data platform.

GP data will not be part of the national platform. The NHS FDP does not change data controllership arrangements so if there is data sharing agreement between integrated care boards (on behalf of the ICS) and GPs locally to share data for care co-ordination then they can use their local instance of the NHS FDP for that purpose.

Existing Data will be brought together to support decision making and operational use of data, ensuring that all key information is available to a clinician delivering care or an administrator planning a clinic. It will also be used for analysing activity, auditing quality, planning service delivery, and service analysis to improve patient outcomes.

For example, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust has used new software in its gynaecology department to track patients with suspected cancer through to diagnosis and first treatment, which has reduced the waiting time for a first appointment by an average of two days and cut the overall time to diagnosis. That’s two days less that patients spent worrying and waiting to find out what the next steps in their treatment will be.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust is using software to monitor all admitted patients and assess any potential barriers to discharge. The system has freed up almost 10 hours of clinician time each week and resulted in patients going home faster, with long stays (over 21 days) falling by more than a third (36%).

An elderly patient has been in hospital but is now medically well enough to leave. However, their discharge is being delayed because a bed in a care home hasn’t been found and staff are spending a lot of time calling different care homes to try and find a space.

The NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) will enable staff to quickly see if and where there is an available bed in a care home within the patient’s local community, or if there is an alternative option available, such as a space on a virtual ward. The clinician will be able to speak through the options with the patient and together they can decide on the preferred course of action.

Not only will the use of FDP have freed up clinical time, with staff no longer having to ring round different care homes, but the patient is more involved in the decision about their care and is able to be discharged more quickly into the appropriate location.

This also means that a bed is freed up for an incoming patient who needs to be cared for in an acute setting, as it is no longer occupied by someone who is medically well enough to be discharged.

Case studies from our pilots are published on NHS England’s website.

Information about how the privacy and confidentiality of patient data will be protected is published on the NHS England website.

There is no specific patient opt out from data being shared into the FDP, as FDP is IT software bringing existing patient data together from a wide range of existing clinical IT systems to process it for the same purposes as it is currently being processed. This allows clinicians to plan and deliver care more efficiently to improve patient care.

Anyone wishing to find out more about data use and the NHS can visit Powerful moments, powered by NHS data, and read further information about keeping data safe. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is also undertaking a national public engagement exercise on the use of health data, as part of the DHSC’s Data Strategy, Data Saves Lives.

If, in the future, FDP is used for a purpose where the national data opt out does apply, then it will always be respected. This means that the records of patients who have registered a national data opt out will not be processed in the FDP for these purposes.

Where data is currently used for purposes other than the individual care of patients, for example, to plan NHS services, de-identified data is almost always used. Where de-identified data cannot be used for these purposes, patients have the right to opt out of their identifiable data being used in certain circumstances, through registering a national data opt out.

There is no specific patient opt out from information being accessed via FDP. This is because the FDP is IT software bringing existing patient data together from a wide range of existing clinical IT systems to process it for the same purposes as it is currently being processed. This ensures that NHS staff providing care have the information they need, about patients for their individual care, to allow staff to plan and deliver care more efficiently to improve patient care. The new FDP IT software will be routinely used by NHS staff to provide all of their patients with individual care.

When information is shared for the purposes of providing individual care, NHS staff will ensure that the information is relevant and appropriate as they have to balance sharing of patient information with their duty to protect patient confidentiality.

As is the case now, where patients have asked a health care professional not to share certain confidential information about them, including with other members of the care team, for the purposes of their individual care, and this request has been agreed by the healthcare professional, this information will not be shared. Not sharing information might impact on providing patients with safe care.

Learn more about how healthcare professionals use and share patient data.

Secure data environment (SDE) is the generic term for the way NHSE will provide access to NHS data in the future.

The FDP is for the NHS, or those commissioned by them, to access data for direct care and population health planning purposes; it will not be used for external research.

The NHS Research SDE Network is for external users and/or those conducting research to access data.

No. NHS England works closely with the National Cyber Security Centre to ensure that all information is protected from the threat of a cyber-attack. All data will be accessed in line with the Office for National Statistics’ Five Data Safes.

Data Protection is enforced via the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation. If an organisation doesn’t comply, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) may need to take action against the company.

The ICO has a range of enforcement powers that it can use where appropriate. It can issue monetary penalties of up to a maximum of £17.5 million – or 4% of the total annual worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, whichever is higher – in the most serious cases. Read more information on possible penalties.

Palantir provides NHS England with data management platform services (built on Palantir’s Foundry software) which was procured to provide the national organisations responsible for coordinating the response to COVID-19 with secure, reliable and timely data – in a way that protects the privacy of our citizens – in order to make informed, effective decisions.

Following an independent procurement exercise, a consortium led by Palantir was awarded the contract to deliver the NHS Federated Data Platform in November 2023.

The award of the contract to Palantir means that the NHS Federated Data Platform will utilise their Foundry software, however, will be configured to support the enhanced capabilities the FDP will provide.

Services built on the legacy Foundry platform have been assessed and those that are still required are being migrated to the FDP.

Under General Data Protection Regulation, everyone can ask for a “subject access request”. This is a request for information that an organisation holds about you. Read more information about your right of access.

Data Protection is enforced via the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation. If an organisation doesn’t comply, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) may need to take action against the company.

The ICO has a range of enforcement powers that it can use where appropriate. It can issue monetary penalties of up to a maximum of £17.5 million – or 4% of the total annual worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, whichever is higher – in the most serious cases. Read more information on possible penalties.

Patients can have confidence that data in the Federated Data Platform will always remain in the full control and protection of the NHS.

The NHS will not give access to confidential patient data for marketing or insurance purposes.

You can ask further questions about the Federated Data Platform, leave feedback about any aspect of it, or register to take part in future FDP engagement activity via the engagement portal.