Inside FDP - part 2: Delivering on the NHS vision for data | Computer Weekly

"For decades, NHS data investment has followed a reporting-first approach. Leaders want visibility into one of the largest organisations in the world, for legitimate reasons, at a time when the pace of technology has been extraordinary. They have poured investment into back-office data teams - expensive engineering and analytical staff, expensive software, expensive consultancies."

"The result is an estate with thousands of manual cross-organisational data flows. Entire national programmes are dedicated to burden reduction and data flow transformation, programmes that exist solely because the current model creates the burden in the first place. Analytical infrastructure is duplicated at every level of the system."

"And the cost of shadow IT is absorbed invisibly by clinical staff time that should be spent on patients. None of this was obvious at the time those decisions were made. Technology was moving fast, the demands on the NHS were relentless, and it was genuinely hard to step back and see that the reporting-first approach was creating the very problems it was meant to solve."

The NHS has historically invested heavily in back-office data teams, expensive software, and consultancies to provide leadership visibility into organizational operations. However, this reporting-first approach neglected frontline data capability development. Most NHS Trusts maintained minimal teams to customize electronic patient records, insufficient to address systemic data infrastructure problems. This strategy resulted in thousands of manual cross-organizational data flows, duplicated analytical infrastructure at every system level, and substantial shadow IT costs absorbed through clinical staff time diverted from patient care. National programmes now exist solely to reduce burden and transform data flows—problems created by the current model itself. While technology moved rapidly and NHS demands remained relentless, the reporting-first investment strategy inadvertently generated the very challenges it aimed to solve.

Read at ComputerWeekly.com