NHS in talks with US government about opening up patient data

19.09.2012
The National Health Service (NHS) in the UK is in discussions with the US government about how best to open up its public data for re-use.

Computerworld UK spoke to the US' deputy chief technology officer for government innovation, Chris Vein, at Salesforce's Dreamforce event in San Francisco this week, where he said that the UK government is effectively aiming to 'blow up' the NHS as it is currently structured and rebuild it, and plans are set to include opening up datasets.

Vein revealed that the person in the UK heading up the discussions with the US government is Tim Kelsey, who recently left the Cabinet Office to become the national director for patients and information at the NHS Commissioning Board.

He said that examples of how datasets may be used include patients being able to download their own medical information, which would then enable them to take their own data to organisations or medical bodies of their choice.

Another example Vein cited was hospitals comparing death rates for certain surgeries, which he believed would create competition to improve services.

Speaking in a general session at Dreamforce Vein explained that the US government's ambitious plans to open up data. It has already launched a data.gov platform, which contains government data at a federal level and is available for people and companies to re-use. However, it is also launching similar platforms at a city, county and state level.