NHS Digital – 21st September 2023
This report presents results from collaborative work undertaken by NHS Digital and NHS Improvement to continue and expand the collection of pilot data on acute patient-level costing for accident and emergency, admitted patient care and outpatient activity that occurred in 2021-22. It includes analysis of costing data linked to activity reported in HES, demonstrating the richer analysis of costing data that is possible using the linked data.
NHS Digital- 18 January 2023
Neil Gibbs, Cloud Engagement Lead at NHS Digital, says we need more NHS organisations to migrate to the cloud and explains what help is available.
The benefits of migrating services from on-premise data centres to the cloud are clear. Cloud hosting is cost-effective, allows for greater speed, agility and scalability of services, improves security and creates more opportunities to adopt innovative solutions.
Further information – How to jump into the cloud
Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) – promotes a best practice approach to drive the adoption of Cloud services. It provides a centralised enablement function and supports Cloud service consumers across NHS Digital and the wider NHS.
NHS England – 1st February 2023
NHS England and NHS Digital have today legally merged in the first step towards creating a new, single organisation to lead the NHS in England to deliver high-quality services for all.
The move brings the NHS’ national data and technology expertise into one organisation, creating a closer link between the collection and analysis of data to help drive improvement to patient outcomes.
The transformative power of data and digital has remained central to the NHS’ ability to respond to major events – with the online National Booking Service helping drive the world-leading NHS Covid vaccination programme to administer almost 145 million doses.
In addition, the NHS has continued to harness the latest technology to tackle the extreme pressures seen in urgent and emergency care this winter, for example through the expansion of virtual wards and 24/7 system control centres.
The legal merger has been formally confirmed as, following parliamentary approval, the regulations which transfer the functions of NHS Digital to NHS England and abolish NHS Digital, have been made by ministers and come into effect today.
Further details – NHS Digital and NHS England complete merger
NHS Digital | December 20221| Accelerating patient access to their record
This guidance for GP practices outlines how enabling patients to view their medical record through the NHS App and other online service will accelerate patient access to their health record.
From April 2022, patients with online accounts such as through the NHS App will be able to read new entries in their health record. This applies to patients whose practices use the TPP and EMIS systems. Arrangements with practices which use Vision as the clinical system are under discussion.
This is an NHS England programme supported by NHSX and NHS Digital.
The change supports NHS Long Term Plan commitments to provide patients with digital access to their health records. It means GPs will need to consider the impact of each entry, including documents and test results, as they add them to a patient’s record. Patients will not see personal information – such as positive test results – until they have been checked and filed, giving GPs the chance to contact and speak to patients first.
We also aim to enable patients to request their historic coded records in 2022 through the NHS App.
Research shows that increasing numbers of patients want easy access to health information about them, including 80% of the 20 million NHS App users. Better access supports patients as partners in managing their health, and can help reduce queries to general practice such as on negative test results and referral letters.
Full details are available from NHS Digital
National Health Executive | October 2021 | How NHS Digital is helping improve cardiac arrest outcomes
The NHS Pathways Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), provided by NHS Digital, underpins all NHS 111 services and half of the 999 ambulance services in England. CDSS plays a vital role in ensuring that trained health advisors and clinicians provide safe and accurate care over the phone, including in instances where patients are suffering from suspected cardiac arrest. NHS Pathways is designed to recognise and respond with the utmost urgency to any patient who may be in cardiac arrest.
Over the past year, NHS Pathways has identified nearly 20 000 suspected cardiac arrest patients and ensured that they receive the fastest possible ambulance response. In addition, and whilst waiting for the ambulance to arrive, members of the public are supported to commence effective CPR, buying vital time, and substantially increasing the chance of a successful outcome.
The NHS Digital team trains staff in using the NHS Pathways CDSS, and constantly reviews and revises the system to ensure that it is fully up-to-date, and that the instructions given ensure patients receive the best possible care. NHS Digital has also become involved in helping to train the wider public in CPR skills on Restart a Heart Day, and we will continue to do all we can to reduce the mortality from this sudden and deadly condition by supporting NHS staff and citizens to recognise and respond to cardiac arrest, thereby working together to save lives (Source: NHE).
Full piece available from the National Health Executive
Open Access Government | February 2021| Covid-19 leads to surge in the use of NHS tech in 2020
Ben Davison, NHS Digital’s Executive Director for Product Development, explains how NHS Digital saw an ‘unprecedented demand’ in people’s usage of NHS tech services due tothe pandemic.
Ben outlines how usage of the NHS website, NHS App, NHS login, NHS Pathways, NHS 111 Online and the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) increased exponentially.
Full story from Open Access Government
NHS X | August 2020| Improving support and collaboration for digital innovation
NHS X has launched the Innovation Collaboratives – Digital Health workspace on the NHS Futures platform is for NHS and social care staff keen to adopt and scale locally. It is intended to become a vibrant space where people question and support each other and learn together.
This is a real opportunity to join up improvement science thinking with digital implementation approaches. This could be the application of the well tested PDSA (plan, do, study, act) tool from many improvement methodologies to implementing digital innovation at pace. We can progress rapidly but with the knowledge that we are measuring progress as we go and demonstrating impact.
We can share our learning with others very quickly through the workspace. We will provide access to useful tools from both digital implementation and improvement science and encourage everyone who joins the site to actively contribute their own favourite tools and to ask for help with some of the wicked problems we all face. Couple this with easy access to case studies, blueprints, webinars and podcasts and hopefully we will collectively enable great things to be achieved.
These resources will support NHS and social care organisations to speedily adopt proven new ways of working such as:
Further details from NHSX
Press release here
A tool that provides data on protected vulnerable children for the NHS and local authorities is being broadened to include school nurses and health visitors | NHS Digital
The move forms part of NHS Digital’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and is intended to strengthen protection for children at risk of abuse at a time when the risk for many is heightened.
Child Protection Information Sharing (CP-IS) is a system that alerts NHS staff when children who are subject to a child protection plan, or children designated as ‘looked after’, or pregnant women who have an unborn child protection plan, present at an unscheduled care setting (such as an A&E or walk in centre). It also alerts the child’s social worker when such a visit occurs, ensuring a joined up full picture.
Now the system is being urgently amended so that school nurses and health visitors will receive details of all children falling under any of those three categories in their school or area. The information will be sent to them via their clinical system from the NHS Spine.
Full detail at NHS Digital
NHS Digital | April 2019 | NHS staff and parents to gain access to crucial child health information
A new live service which enable access to important child health information at the point of care for health professionals has been launched by the NHS.
The service, the National Events Management Service, securely publishes information on key health interventions for children. Parents and health professionals can securely receive information digitally and use it to inform decisions on care and treatment, the service is the result of collaboration between NHS Digital and NHS England with IT suppliers.
The service shows which preventative interventions a child has received; improving the speed of diagnosis and treatment by giving health visitors and parents access to the same information sources at the same time.
The service has initially launched in North East London in partnership with North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT) and their health visiting and child health services. IT suppliers which already support the Trust have connected their products to the new service.
Full details from NHS Digital
This report presents the findings of research carried out during the pilot phase of the NHS App roll out. The research was used to test and improve the user experience of the NHS App, and to plan effective support for GP practices as the app is rolled out across England | via NHS Digital
In late 2017, it was decided that the NHS would develop an app that all patients in England could use to carry out a series of important tasks, such as booking GP appointments and ordering repeat prescriptions. Since then a team of staff from NHS Digital and NHS England has been working to develop, build and test the NHS App.
This report contains the findings from the pilot phase, drawn from analytics and what was found during research with users and GP practices.
Full report at NHS Digital
Quality Improvement News 