Helping the NHS standardise and share data - Discovery phase

An ambition to make health and social care data more joined-up was proving difficult. We gathered evidence to help shape a national strategy.

Background

In March 2021, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care gave a speech about the critical importance technology played in the coronavirus response.

He highlighted how interoperability - joining up IT systems to allow instant data-sharing - has the potential to transform health and social care.

Brief

We were engaged by NHSX [now NHS England] to carry out a discovery phase into a digital solution that could move the government closer to its ambition of an interoperable health and social care system.

A workshop plotting out types of interoperability standards

What we did

Over 4 weeks, we carried out a discovery that explored:

• user groups and their role in building, commissioning and enforcing interoperable health tech
• needs and pain points
• whether NHSX’s proposed standards catalogue would meet these needs

In total we carried out 28 sessions with users, identifying over 60 user needs and 9 high level problems that needed to be solved for interoperability to be achieved. These high level problems were:

• standards are difficult to find
• interoperability, standards and the benefits they bring aren’t well understood
• the NHS haven't mandated or enforced any interoperability standards
• contracts don’t always list the correct standards
• standards development can be slow
• lack of funding to align health care providers’ existing solutions to minimum standards
• healthcare providers have competing priorities
• difficulty accessing central data services
• people find it hard to get widespread support for interoperability

A section of the board used to capture all user needs identified in discovery

Results

NHS England now had a rich source of clear evidence with which to inform their overarching strategy.

To help them move forward we produced a:

• user ecosystem map visualising the 50 different user groups and their relationships to one another
• user needs board with the 60 identified user needs, categorised into themes that can be taken forward in separate work streams
• list of prioritised user needs to inform the design of the standards catalogue in Alpha
• set of communication materials to help inform and engage stakeholders

Feedback

“I just want to say: amazing work all! Thank you. Really impressed with [your final] report” Irina Bolychevsky, NHSX Director of Standards and Interoperability