How does the NHS Federated Data Platform work?
The NHS Federated Data Platform (NHS FDP) allows the NHS to have a better understanding of the data it already legally collects and uses to improve patient care delivery and planning.
A national NHS England instance replaces multiple legacy systems and provides accurate, near-real-time data for strategic and operational planning.
In addition to this every hospital trust and integrated care board (ICB) (on behalf of the integrated care system (ICS)) will have their own separate instance of the software for which they are the data controller.
Each NHS organisation with an instance of the NHS FDP can connect and share information when appropriate, provided data protection law permits it. For example, this can facilitate discharging a patient from hospital to a care setting.
NHS England has procured and paid for licenses for all NHS funded care providers and the 42 ICBs for the next seven years.
While implementation is not being mandated, all trusts and ICBS are being asked to provide plans for how they will maximise the benefits of the NHS FDP for their patients within the next two years.
Demand is high, so we are asking trusts and ICBs to sign-up, so that we can schedule them into the overall delivery timeline.
What this means for trusts and integrated care systems
- Connect siloed systems to support staff to access the information they need in one safe and secure environment.
- Provide better visibility of their data, with more opportunity to query it, and the ability to audit the data to understand how things have been managed in the past to improve lessons learnt.
- Provide the insights needed to understand the current and future needs of their populations so ICSs can tailor early preventative services.
- Enable the effective coordination of care between local health and care organisations and services and reduce the number of long stays in hospital.
- Deliver the capability to develop digital tools that address their most pressing operational challenges and enhance their ability to make informed and effective decisions.
- Enable the effective coordination of care between local health and care organisations and services and reduce the number of long stays in hospital.
- Enable the rapid scaling and sharing of innovative tools and applications that have been developed at a local level – in a secure way – supporting levelling up agenda and reducing variation across England, whilst still retaining local controls for data access.
It will provide health and care providers with information, that they already hold, at their fingertips, while maintaining the highest standards of confidentiality.
Federation means that each trust and ICS has their own instance of the NHS Federated Data Platform, for which they are the data controller. Access for each instance of the FDP will be governed and managed by each individual organisation. Trusts and ICSs are not mandated to adopt an instance of the NHS FDP.
Over 40 pilot sites have been testing products similar to the local products that the NHS FDP will provide. Use of the products has seen pilot sites realise one or more of the following benefits: falls in waiting times, increased theatre utilisation, reduction in discharge delays, and diagnoses speed up. A series of case studies have been published. These products will be the first nationally commissioned local products made available to trust and ICSs on the NHS FDP.