North West London Integrated Care System (NW London ICS) is committed to delivering the best care for its patients in an efficient and effective manner. One of the ways we do this is through the use of shared systems across the ICS and sharing of patient data across those healthcare systems. Sharing data in this way helps us to better manage patient care and, most importantly, as a result, deliver the best possible to care to patients of the NHS.
This page describes all the pan-London programmes of work that support integrated care across the NHS in London. Each programme of work has its own suite of information available via specific links – where each integrated care system is described in full.
The NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) is a system that strictly enables NHS provider organisations to bring together operational patient data, ensuring staff that work for the NHS can access the data they need to deliver the best possible care for their patients, in the most efficient way, utilising the full extent of the range of functionalities available on the FDP.
At present, across the UK, patient data resides in different systems accordingly, as each NHS provider organisation is sovereign in its own right. The FDP is a ‘central’ platform that allows for all the necessary patient data to be streamlined into one area, so NHS staff that need access to the data are able to do so, reducing all the burdens, time, and effort in obtaining the necessary data. What this means is, both the clinician treating the patient, and the patient themselves, are placed in a position where they receive more coordinated care, allowing the NHS to function even more efficiently, hence benefitting the patient pathway.
Personal Data that is processed in the FDP will include information that identifies an individual, including basic information about them such as a name, address, date of birth and contact details, and information about the individual’s health and treatment. Each FDP Product will process only the minimum amount of data necessary to meet the NHS requirements.
The data processed in the FDP comes from Personal Data already held in local IT systems or shared back with them, in compliance with data protection laws. For example, NHS Trusts includes data from hospital systems like theatre scheduling and electronic patient records. Sometimes, new information generated by the Product, such as hospital discharge summaries, is shared back into these systems.
Data will be kept in the FDP for as long as it is necessary for a User Organisation to process it. This will depend on the Product the data is used in and the purposes for which the data is processed. The processing of all Personal Data, including the periods of time that data is kept, will be in accordance with the NHS Records Management Code of Practice 2021.
Keeping your patient data safe is a key priority for NHS Trusts. We abide by the principles as set out in the Data Protection legislation and self-assess our state of compliance with Information Governance and Security Standards via the Data Security & Protection Toolkit. We also use internal auditors to scrutinise our self-assessment scores.
All NHS staff—whether permanent, temporary, bank or volunteer—must comply with the legislation, and confidentiality is part of statute and common law. Maintaining your confidentiality at all times is treated with the utmost seriousness and staff contracts ensure this even after leaving an NHS Trust. Clinicians also have professional codes of conduct with which they need to comply, and these deal with confidentiality of healthcare.
The Universal Care Plan (UCP) is system that allows patients to have their care and support wishes digitally shared with healthcare professionals across the UK.
- A ‘care plan’ is a form of a plan that is recorded on the patient’s medical record where a conversation has been had with the patient and the healthcare professional. During the conversation, the healthcare professional will capture the following information to ensure an appropriate care plan, according to the wishes of the patient, accurately captures the necessary information to support the patient in the delivery of the best possible care.
- What is important to the person in their day-to-day life
- Their preferences or wishes about their care
- What support they need and who is best placed to provide this
- Information about others who may be involved in that person’s care, such as relatives
- The care plan is then created following this conversation using the Universal Care Plan. As soon as information is saved on the plan, it is visible to all health and care services who use it. This includes the London Ambulance Service, 111 and Out of Hours GP services who may see the person in an emergency.
he London Care Record (LCR) is a system that supports coordinated care in the manner of providing all the information on a patient’s health via one single central platform. In doing so, healthcare professionals are able to see important details regarding the health of a patient as and when necessary.
Having a secure and central way of viewing the patient’s information enables a more efficient way of communication between healthcare professional across London, and hence providing a more efficient and coordinated way of delivering the best possible care.
The London Secure Data Environment (LSDE) is a system to support transform health outcomes in the entire region. It houses a longitudinal patient record for residents, which exists to help clinicians and analysts derive insights that can be used to improve health services and outcomes for Londoners. This means enabling more proactive care delivery to individuals, supporting better planning for local communities, and enabling more powerful academic and commercial research and development. These activities underpin London’s strategic objectives to shift care from hospital to community, from treatment to prevention, and from analogue to digital.
For more information on the LSDE, please refer to the following links:
https://londonhealthdatastrategy.org/resources/london-secure-data-environment-sde/