Roundtable 1: Digital infrastructure and health data  

Chair: Matthew Swindells, Joint Chair of West London’s four Acute NHS Trusts and former Deputy Chief Executive of NHS England 

Currently, local authorities do not have access to all NHS data, which prevents them from making decisions about the access to social care services. ICSs will provide better transparency and choice to patients, through the sharing of data between local authorities, the NHS and patients.   Real-time insights from joined-up, aggregated data will be crucial to achieving success in the fields of multi-disciplinary working, clinical decision support, waiting list management at the same time as ensuring new community diagnostic centres can become a success.

Only around 40 per cent of social care providers use electronic care records, with the remaining providers relying heavily on paper-based methods. Digitisation of patient healthcare records and the improvement of data collection methods will be essential to bringing service efficiency and fully realising personal health records. Patient-centred digital health enables patients to book appointments, order prescriptions, and communicate with their care providers on one platform.

This first roundtable provides an opportunity for ICS leaders to discuss the sharing of data and the delivery of personalised and predictive care, based on an individual’s risk. It will convene experts in digital health to help guide ICSs on the future development of personalised patient health records.