England’s NHS is trying once again to collate patients’ data

BEING IN HOSPITALNHSITNHSNHSFDP is rarely fun. But some things in the () contrive to add to patients’ pains. When systems cannot talk to each other, the sick must drive themselves dizzy repeating their medical histories in every new interaction. Without good systems to manage data, operating rooms often lie empty despite endless demand. Such snafus are not only maddening, but harmful. Each delay to treatment compounds backlogs exacerbated by strikes and the covid-19 pandemic, pushing the waiting list in England to a record 7.75m cases.Such inefficiencies are not inevitable. Many can be reduced by stitching together disparate datasets across the , as an upcoming project, the Federated Data Platform, or , should do. Its boring name belies big ambitions. In pilots using similar software doctors have diagnosed cancer patients quicker when their scans, prescriptions and appointments are collated in one place. When one hospital trust combined data to monitor barriers to discharges, the number of long stays fell by over a third. Opportunities go far beyond helping doctors see more patients. Artificial intelligence trained on large datasets spots patterns human eyes never could.