FDP ‘being held back by a lack of clarity from the centre’

The NHS federated data platform (FDP) is being held back by risk aversion and a lack of clarity from the centre, according to speakers at Digital Health Rewired.

Chairing a session on the FDP on 24 March, Jon Hoeksma, chief executive at Future Health Intelligence, noted the lack of decision on whether primary care should be included in the platform.

In response, Will Monaghan, group chief digital information officer at University Hospital Leicester NHS Trust and University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group, said that the principle of including primary care data “is absolutely right”, but suggested that work on the FDP was too “risk averse”.

“It’s right that there are data controllers, but I just feel it’s a missed opportunity for the NHS.

“I would hate to think that it’s politics that is stopping us doing something that is better for patient care,” Monaghan said.

His comments follow concerns from human rights organisations and doctors that about how Palantir could use patient data in the FDP, after reports that in the US formerly separate datasets including medical records, had been linked by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement using the firm’s platforms.

A Palantir spokesperson, told Digital Health News that the firm had “no intention or means” of using the data in that way and that “to do so would be illegal and in breach of contract”.

Monaghan, who is based at an FDP “incubator site”, said that his organisation’s “creaky infrastructure” had made progress — including using the platform as a data warehouse — that would not have been affordable without the national  platform.

The downside, he said, was the time it takes to ensure that “the team from Palantir and the team from the NHS really understand the local context”.

Kavitha Saravanakumar, interim chief information officer at NHS North West London, called for “greater clarity” from NHS England on the FDP, and called for a roadmap “so we all know what we are expecting from the centre”.

She highlighted that local resource issues were hindering the FDP’s progress.

“We have to be honest, just having an FDP is not going to solve everything. The organisation hasn’t got the funding to bed it in and support implementation,” Saravanakumar  said.

Marc Farr, chief analytical officer at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, said that the focus should be on using the FDP to “automate away manual work” and making it easier to handle data.

“Forget all the sexy stuff – just make it much simpler,” Farr said.

He emphasised the potential of data sharing to assist the response in crisis situations, such as the recent meningitis outbreak in Kent would be “a massive opportunity” which hasn’t been delivered yet.

“At the moment we are tinkering – the pace is just not there,” Farr added.

Last year, Farr, who chairs the NHS Chief Analytical Officer’s Network, wrote an open letter to Ming Tang, chief data and analytics officer at NHS England, raising concerns about whether the FDP is capable of supporting local systems.