In Somerset, we are developing a ‘Linked Data Platform’ to support population health management. This platform will connect data from healthcare systems and partners, providing a comprehensive view of our communities. Data will be shared anonymously with partners to support research and more effective commissioning of health and wellbeing services. When research indicates specific cases within a neighbourhood or GP practice, the platform will allow GPs to re-identify those patients to offer health interventions.
Why Build Our Own Technology?
Under the government’s new data ownership framework, we as an Integrated Care System (ICS) hold full accountability for all data activities across any common platform. By building the Linked Data Platform ourselves, we can ensure we have robust governance around how data is linked, processed, and ethically managed.
Why Not Use Existing Population Health Tools?
We are focusing on building the ‘integration and governance layer’ — this is the layer that joins the data together and makes sense of different coding and terminology. Ultimately this layer gives us one version of the truth across all partners and will allow existing population health tools to sit on top of it. There are four reasons why doing this hard work ourselves makes sense:
- We have a large number of system partners to link and cleanse data across, some of which will not be using the NHS number as a common identifier. Building the logic to enable this work to be automated is not something we can buy off the shelf. Managing this process proactively ourselves is critical to minimise risk.
- Different partners see varying value in a single tool, complicating data-sharing agreements. All Somerset partners want to use the anonymised data differently.
- Relying on a single tool could lead to ‘vendor lock-in’, making future changes or innovations difficult. Our approach prevents this by allowing flexibility.
- Building our system ensures patient data is not exposed to commercial organisations, maintaining ethical standards and control over data access.