An update from NHS England has highlighted the number of acute hospital trusts and ICBs to have signed up to the Federated Data Platform (FDP), one year after its introduction.
According to the update, a total of 87 acute hospital trusts and 28 ICBs in England have signed up so far, with “new data” from NHS England suggesting that hospital trusts utilising the FDP “have each treated on average 114 more inpatients in theatres every month since introducing the tool”.
Ming Tang, chief data and analytics officer at NHS England, spoke of his “delight” that “over 100 NHS organisations have already signed up to use the service in its first year”, adding: “Hospital trusts using the tool are seeing dozens more patients each month and we’re working with NHS organisations to bring these benefits to as many more patients as possible.”
The platform works by bringing together real-time data on things like bed capacity, elective waiting lists, staff rosters, and social care places, supporting staff in planning their resources, and forming a part of the NHS’s broader plan to reform patient care.
More from NHS England
In the month of November so far, NHS England opened a market engagement stage, ahead of an upcoming NHS Cyber Risk Rating Platform tender, designed to support NHS organisations to “better understand their security posture” and their management of threats that could impact on operations and organisational data.
NHSE also published a roadmap for the Organisation Data Service (ODS), sharing what has been delivered to date and planned changes to June of 2025, with the main objectives of delivering a “single source of truth” for organisation reference data, continuous data enhancements, an agile response to “the changing needs of the NHS”, and products “utilising latest technology (interoperability)”.
November also saw the publication of a letter penned by NHSE’s chief delivery officer and national director for system development, highlighting a need for optimisation of the NHS system, “greater clarity” around what every part of the NHS is accountable for, and emphasising intentions to follow the Darzi report guidance to shift from analogue to digital methods.
Future health and care
The secretary of state for health and social care also established 11 working groups to consider “the future vision for the NHS”, working to develop a 10-year health plan around areas including access, integrated care, infrastructure, data, tech, innovation, and more.
And Wes Streeting spoke on ambitions to reform the NHS at the NHS Providers annual conference 2024, citing “the Darzi diagnosis” of the health service, highlighting long waiting times as the “biggest barrier” to accessing care, and citing opportunities offered by technology and data in modernising care.
Join HTN for a panel discussion on utilising data to transform primary care, scheduled for 5 December. Along with a panel of experts from across the health sector, we’ll talk about using the right data to support change, use cases, challenges, and the role of data in supporting access, capacity, and demand management.
And don’t miss the HTN AI and Data Awards, celebrating how AI and data are making an impact across health and care.
