NHS England has published a Value Sharing Framework and a Data Partnerships Guide to support the trend for setting up the partnerships in the health service.
Dr Claire Bloomfield, director of the Centre for Data Innovation, and Dr Margaret Charleroy, head of strategy at the centre, said the publications are intended as resources to support data driven innovation in the health service.
A data partnership is an agreement between an NHS organisation and an external organisation that allows the external partner to access health and care knowledge assets for a specific purpose.
The Value Sharing Framework provides a set of high level principles on which they should be based, with the aims of providing value to NHS patients, supporting economic growth and producing financial value to the health service.
The four principles are that: cost of access should not prevent good use of data; the NHS will always charge a fee for accessing health data; the cost of access should depend on how data is being used; and the NHS should share in the value created by its data.
Complementing secure environments
The document says the principles are designed to complement the establishment of secure data environments – data storage and access platforms – a network of which is currently taking shape across England.
It also provides details on expected changes in implementation of the partnerships, the public benefits and policy relevant to the framework.
The Data Partnerships Guide has been drawn up to give individuals and teams an understanding of the priorities and key steps.
It covers an understanding of the key concepts of data partnerships, what makes a successful partnership, how to create a strategy to manage data assets, how to obtain fair value for the public from the partnerships, establishing a pricing strategy and implementing the approach.
Among the steps outlined is to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial uses of data, understand and mitigate any risks in a partnership, and to use a template for a data asset management strategy available through NHS England.
Embrace innovation
Writing in a blogpost, Bloomfield and Charleroy said: “As we look ahead, continuing to embrace data driven innovation will enable the NHS to deliver world class outcomes for our ever growing population. That means more partnerships that will help us to: use data more effectively; integrate health and social care; get better at preventing illness (not just treat it); and speed up the discovery and adoption of 21st century diagnostics and treatments.
“It means harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning to support new tools for identifying potential health risks before they become critical, allowing for more proactive interventions.”
They added that support from the public is based on data security and privacy, and that this will be encouraged by the move to data access rather than sharing.
