NHS England has unveiled plans to develop a federated data platform (FDP), with an estimated procurement value of £240 million.

It has published a prior information notice for potential suppliers ahead of an open procurement. 

According to the notice, the FDP will be “an ecosystem of technologies and services” and “an essential enabler to transformational improvements across the NHS”. It will be built around five major use cases: population health and person insight, care co-ordination, elective recovery, vaccines and immunisation, and the supply chain.

The notice says the scope of the procurement will comprise two lots: one for the FDP itself, with integrated care system (ICS) integration and consultancy and communications support for ICS implementation and adoption​, the other for privacy-enhancing technology.

A supplier briefing will take place on 13 April 2022, with the publication of the contract notice planned for 6 June 2022.

WHY IT MATTERS

Data federation is a software process that allows multiple databases to function as one. The virtual database takes data from a range of sources and converts them to a common model, providing a single source of data for front-end applications.

This can facilitate access to sensitive health data, offering a potential solution to address the issue of siloed health data and barriers to data sharing. 

The move follow’s UK health secretary Sajid Javid’s recent announcement of a technological agenda for the NHS, which includes plans to “level up the digital provision all across health and social care.”

THE LARGER CONTEXT

According to Digital Health News,  the front-runner for the FDP contract is widely assumed to be US software firm Palantir Technologies, which partnered with NHSE, alongside Microsoft and Amazon to develop a data platform to inform the COVID-19 response.

Last year tech-justice firm Foxglove issued a lawsuit on behalf of openDemocracy over the £23.5 million NHS data deal with Palantir.

ON THE RECORD

Peter Wilson, director industry principle, government, Pegasystems, said: “It’s heartening to see the announcement by NHS, of the intention to run an open tender for the development of a federated data platform, to enable their transformation ambitions, albeit I and many others will be keen to hear more details of the proposition at a supplier day on 13^th April.

“The terminology is quite specific in industry terms and it’s an important step to accept that structures like an ICS will always have a multitude of patient (and other) data stores, but that having a means to provide a consolidated view of them is long overdue.

“However, I’ve been advocating for a while now that this is only part of the story. Equally important is the ability to recognise that there will be times when it’s also necessary to coordinate and orchestrate a “patient journey” across the organisational components of an ICS, because frankly that’s the point of taking a consolidated view of the data.”

Alastair Allen, chief technology officer at Better, said: “The potential of a federated data platform across the NHS is incredibly exciting as it should enable multiple, distributed data stores to function independently but also together as one. Such a platform could help manage a range of challenges including care coordination, population health management and elective recovery.

“For this to work it’s essential to have a common data model that is understood across all applications. Without this we will simply repeat mistakes of the past in establishing more distributed silos of data that don’t talk to each other as they don’t share a common language."