NHS Digital

NHS Digital
non-departmental public body overview
Formed April 1, 2013 (2013-04-01)
Jurisdiction England
Headquarters Leeds
non-departmental public body executives
  • Kingsley Manning, Chairman
  • Andy Williams, Chief Executive
Parent department Department of Health
Website www.hscic.gov.uk

NHS Digital, formerly the Health and Social Care Information Centre is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health. The organisation is due to be re-branded as NHS Digital during the summer of 2016.[1] According to George Freeman, the Minister for Life Sciences, this shows that the government is "harnessing technology for modern healthcare and a 21st century NHS".

Earlier known as the NHS Information Centre, it produces national comparative data for secondary uses, developed from the long-running Hospital Episode Statistics which can help local decision makers to improve the quality and efficiency of frontline care.

Its primary aim is to drive the use of information to improve decision making and deliver better care by providing accessible, high quality and timely information to help frontline health and social care staff deliver better care. It stores and analyses data on all hospital activity in the NHS in England. See https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/138265/B6.-Factsheet-Streamlined-arms-length-bodies-250412.pdf

The organisation was created as a special health authority on 1 April 2005 by a merger of parts of the Department of Health, parts of the NHS Information Authority, and the Prescribing Support Unit.

Following the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the HSCIC changed from a special health authority to an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body (ENDPB) on 1 April 2013. Effective at this time, HSCIC will take over the NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) programme.[2]

It runs the Health Survey for England (HSE) and oversees parts of the troubled NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), whose component projects are now under new names.

care.data

A programme called care.data was announced by the HSCIC in Spring 2013. Its aim is to extract data from GP surgeries (GPES) to a central database. Members of the English population who are registered with GP practices are being informed that data on their health may be uploaded to HSCIC unless they prefer this not to happen in which case they may object to their data being used by informing their GP. The data on patients who have not objected may then be used in anonymised form by health care researchers, managers and planners including those outside the NHS such as academic institutions or commercial organisations. The use of identifiable data is governed by the common law on confidentiality, UK data protection legislation, the National Health Service Act 2006 and the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Identifiable data can only be released in compliance with those laws. Software and services are being provided by Atos[3][4] which has itself received criticism for some of its other UK government projects.[5]

Since its launch, the care.data program was controversial.[6] Initially criticism focused around the lack of patient awareness of the programme, and the lack of clarity around options for opting out of the data extraction. The leaflet sent to households in England was criticised for only describing the benefits of the scheme, and not including an opt-out form.[7] The programme was stopped in May 2014 and in October 2014 six clinical commissioning groups in four areas of England were selected to take part in a "pathfinder" programme involving 265 GP surgeries with 1.7 million patients across West Hampshire, Blackburn and Darwen, Leeds and Somerset.[8]

A review by the Cabinet Office Major Projects Authority said to have been conducted in October 2014 concluded that the program had “major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”.[9]

Atos was criticised by the Public accounts committee in December 2015 and accused of taking advantage of the Department of Health and not showing "an appropriate duty of care to the taxpayer”. The company is one of 8 suppliers working on the project and is to be paid £11.4m, an increase on the original £8 million.[10]

In June 2015 it was announced that the programme of data extraction would start again in Blackburn in September.[11] In September 2015, it was announced that the programme had again been paused due to confidentiality concerns remaining unresolved.[12]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/7073/New-trading-name-and-new-Chair-for-HSCIC
  2. ↑ "The Health and Social Care Information Centre Annual Report and Accounts 2011/12" (PDF). Retrieved 19 Apr 2014.
  3. ↑ "care.data". burtonandbransgoremedicalcentres.co.uk. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
  4. ↑ "General Practice Extraction Service (GPES)". Atos. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
  5. ↑ "care.data". Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  6. ↑ "The Independent - 40 per cent of GPs plan to opt out of the NHS big data sweep, due to a lack of confidence in the project". Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  7. ↑ "MedConfidential - "Better information means better care" leaflet". Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  8. ↑ "care.data pilot schemes poised for launch". Pharma Times. 8 October 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  9. ↑ "NHS patient data plans unachievable, review finds". Guardian. 26 June 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  10. ↑ "MPs attack NHS records scheme". Financial Times. 31 December 2015. Retrieved 31 December 2015.
  11. ↑ "Care.data to restart this month". Health Service Journal. 11 June 2015. Retrieved 23 August 2015.
  12. ↑ "Care.Data paused again due to confidentiality concerns". Pulse.

External links

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