A partnership between University Hospital Southampton and TRL, a global centre for innovation in surface transport and mobility, has launched with an aim to reduce road deaths by linking health records and road traffic collision data.
Funded by £500,000 from the Department for Transport and the Road Safety Trust, the Data Sustains Life project sets out to “anonymously integrate wide-ranging data insights, providing a holistic view of the causes and consequences of road crashes in Great Britain”, exploring the relationship between road traffic accidents and resulting health outcomes.
It forms part of the wider Pre-hospital Research and Audit Network (PRANA), which links data from ambulances, police, the Department for Transport, and coroners, as well as emergency care, intensive care, trauma, and rehabilitation registries.
The project will run for two years, focusing on the Dorset, Hampshire, and Thames Valley region, with the potential to be scaled regionally. Findings are expected to inform road safety policies and global best practices, to help save lives and unlock “substantial healthcare economic benefits” in the future.
Dr Hyde, paediatric intensive care consultant and pre-hospital critical care consultant, shared how linking the different data sources required for the project was enabled by the Wessex Secure Data Environment, allowing researchers to “identify patterns, risk factors, and critical points for intervention”. He added: “The ultimate goal is to use these new data to inform better policies and strategies to bring down the number of fatalities and serious injuries.”
Data use across the NHS
The National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care’s annual report for 2023-24 highlighted the need for “seamless and consistent” access to patient data across care settings, and a “strong foundation of effective information sharing” to act as a base for more advanced initiatives. It also cited barriers including “anxieties around breaching confidentiality and data protection law”, and “technical limitations that can only be addressed nationally or regionally, such as poor infrastructure and a lack of system integration”.
The government’s State of Digital Government Review offered a “realistic and unflinching” analysis of digital and data in public services, highlighting fragmented technology and underused data. The review noted that £45 billion per year in “unrealised savings and productivity benefits” could be achieved through full potential digitisation, the “fragmented and duplicative” nature of public sector tech, and the underuse of data which “holds back AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics”.
For a recent HTN Now panel discussion on utilising data to transform primary care, we were joined by a panel of experts including Kathryn Salt, assistant director of primary & community care, data and analytics for the Transformation Directorate, NHS England; Dr Shanker Vijayadeva, GP lead, digital transformation for the London region at NHS England; Dr Sheikh Mateen Ellahi, GP and practice partner at ELM Tree Surgery and South Stockton Primary Care Network; and Max Gattlin, digital consultant at X-on Health.
Looking at how data can help with the move from reactive to proactive care, Shanker said: “It’s often about health promotion, health awareness, and early detection. Examples could be in the core GP IT systems, around early detection of things like CKD, cardiovascular prevention; it’s about how you make it user-friendly, and what we’ve seen change recently is around digital tools, around recall and automation, booking systems, so you’re making it easier to do the workload of prevention.”
