BING BONG NEW PAPER

NHS hospital medicines data is being collected, but then needlessly withheld from analysts.

This means patients are exposed to sub-optimal treatment. And NHS money is being wasted.

The barriers are NOT technical. They are "people". https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2607.full?ijkey=nIHRXr5GpawscdH&keytype=ref">https://www.bmj.com/content/3...

THREAD

Hospitals are where the most expensive drugs are used, and where new drugs are used.

Hospitals are therefore the place where you will find the biggest variation in quality, safety and cost effectiveness of prescribing.

So the biggest opportunities to do good with data!

Don& #39;t believe me?

The NHS primary care drugs budget has stayed steady at about £9bn a year for half a decade.

But the NHS hospital medicines budget has very quickly DOUBLED, from £4.2 to £8.3 billion in just six years. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2607.full?ijkey=nIHRXr5GpawscdH&keytype=ref">https://www.bmj.com/content/3...

That& #39;s a lot of money you say!

Yes it is... in fact the medicines spend is about 14% of the entire NHS budget.

Now stay with this thread, it gets good from here. Come into the labyrinth of NHS data flows...

Primary care GP data is routinely shared since forever, aggregated at practice level, but still amazingly detailed. It& #39;s been open data for ten years, with no hiccups, creating a vast mountain of data science startups, research papers, and tools like our http://OpenPrescribing.net"> http://OpenPrescribing.net 

Hospital medicines usage data... has not been shared.

Here it gets interesting. This is often discussed as a TECHNICAL problem.

But it& #39;s not.

Hospital medicines usage data is collected, nationally aggregated, normalised, through AT LEAST two systems.

Not sharing is a CHOICE.