London-based social enterprise management consultancy, PPL, has launched a free-to-use online tool designed to support neighbourhood health across the capital, bringing a wealth of data together to identify local population trends and needs.
The London Neighbourhood Public Data Explorer tool enables users to view and compare neighbourhoods on a map, explore indicators across different themes, and export information in PDF format for use elsewhere.
“Build your view” functionality is said to offer the flexibility to select relevant locations across neighbourhood, borough, system, and all-London levels, with data on population and demography, health and wellbeing, social factors and wider determinants, safety and crime, and environment and access.
For health and wellbeing it covers 27 indicators including asthma, cancer, blood pressure, heart failure, learning disability, and obesity. Users are able to view comparative prevalence for their selected area, as well as trends and distribution, with an interactive colour-coded map as a visual aid.
According to PPL, QOF data published at GP practice level is modelled down to neighbourhood level using the House of Commons Library’s published methodology involving joining practice patients to LSOAs, imputing an age breakdown per cell, applying a “small” morbidity weighting, apportioning practice registers to LSOAs, and summing to LSOA, then to neighbourhood.
Taking to LinkedIn, PPL said: “There is a wealth of publicly available data that can help drive better health and care decisions. But too often it sits in different places, making it difficult to access, interpret and apply locally. The London Neighbourhood Explorer brings this data together for the first time, allowing users to understand population trends and needs at a neighbourhood level.”
Wider trend: Health data
The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency has announced three winners following an open call for innovative projects looking to make health data “usable, interoperable, and clinically meaningful across fragmented systems”. The Regional Innovation Valley project UNITE is funded by the EU to further European digital health innovation and collaboration. Its first open call, centred on sharing health data and personalising remote care, reportedly prompted engagement from more than 1,000 organisations, and received a total of 19 proposals across universities, startups, hospitals, and healthcare providers. Three projects were ultimately selected for funding, and will enter an implementation phase in Spring 2026.
The newly-created Central East ICB, formed from Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB, and Hertfordshire, has revealed its five-year approach from strategy to delivery, highlighting the role of digital and data in achieving objectives and improving outcomes for the local population. The ICB makes a number of commitments around data, stating “high quality, timely data will be non-negotiable”. Over the next three years, the system’s data approach will look to build a single, shared foundation to support better decision-making, with the aim of having a unified view of data to help understand need, target interventions, and track outcomes.
The Australian Federal Budget for 2026 has been published, with headline commitments to advance interoperability, promote data sharing, and improve access to healthcare services. Among the measures to be outlined in the budget are plans to enhance the My Health Record with an injection of $598.3 million over two years, to ensure both patients and healthcare professionals are able to access reliable and “timely” health data. $79.2 million over three years is further set to go towards states and territories to support the implementation of national digital health reforms.
