The Digitising Social Care (DiSC) programme team has started work on a new Social Care Interoperability Platform (SCIP) to connect health and social care.
Chris Elkington, DiSC assistant director of the NHS England programme, outlined the initiative at the recent Care Show, following an indication of the plan in January.
He said it comes in response to the fragmented nature of data in the social care sector and follows the work on rolling out GP Connect – which allows health and social care workers to view and update patients’ GP records in care settings – and a set of minimum operational data standards (MODS) for adult social care.
“Our next phase will include creating a national, central infrastructure to support interoperability and safely share data to support better care,” Elkington said.
“Through SCIP we aim to join up health and care data to help us deliver truly integrated, efficient, person centred health and care. It will help us close the gap between health and care systems, enabling collaborative working and improving outcomes for individuals and communities.”
Data standard structure
He said the platform will share data structured around the minimum operational data standard for care and save staff from having to connect with hundreds of different health and care systems, enabling them to access all the information in one place.
DiSC is taking an agile approach to the development and aiming to create a base system by March 2026, with a view to evolving it further to meet user needs.
“SCIP will help us join up previously fragmented services, enable seamless communication and data exchanges, and help improve both continuity and quality of care,” Elkington said.
