The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has confirmed the development of a data platform to support the NHS response to the spread of coronavirus.
It said that NHS England and NHS Improvement are developing a ‘backend’ or ‘initial’ store to pull together multiple data sources into a single, secure location, including data such as from the 111 service and coronavirus test results from Public Health England. This is aimed at supporting decision-makers in the NHS cope with the rapidly increasing pressures from the virus.
Adding detail to a report from last week - on which the Government initially declined to comment - it said the initiative involves the development of a dashboard, a beta form of which should be ready to share with decision-makers this week, followed by another to provide information to the public.
The code and data source will be made open where possible.
A handful of technology providers are contributing to the project. Microsoft is supporting the NHS technical teams in building the data store on its Azure cloud platform, while Amazon Web Services is helping to provide infrastructure for the quick and secure launch of the platform.
Google is providing the tools in its G Suite for the NHS to look at the collecting of real time information on hospital responses to coronavirus, with the aim of providing aggregated operational data on issues such as bed occupancy levels and A&E capacity.
AI firm Faculty is supporting the development and execution of the data response strategy with the development of dashboards, models and simulations; and Palantir Technologies is providing its Foundry software to power the front end data platform. The DHSC emphasised that Palantir will be the data processor, not controller, and cannot pass on or use the data for any wider purpose without the permission of NHS England.
Governance and security
The department also highlighted the data governance and security arrangements for the use of the platform. It said that all the data will remain under the control of NHS England and NHS Improvement, and will be either destroyed or returned once the crisis is over.
“All the data in the data store is anonymous, subject to strict controls that meet the requirements of data protection legislation and ensure that individuals cannot be re-identified,” DHSC said. “The controls include removing identifiers such as name and address and replacing these with a pseudonym.
“General Data Protection Regulation principles will be followed, for example the data will only be used for Covid-19 and not for any other purpose and only relevant information will be collected. Any request to access data will be reviewed through a single process controlled solely by NHS England and NHS Improvement and NHSX.”
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