NHS is set to publish a new draft data strategy next week that would allow people to view their medical records, and keep track of their health information.
The proposed strategy is based on the lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic, as data has helped the NHS to provide better care to people suffering from coronavirus and other health issues over the last 18 months.
“We need to learn from the pandemic to improve the way our health and care system processes data, giving power to patients and enabling clinicians to use data in new ways to improve patient care and support research for innovative treatments,” Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said.
During the pandemic, data on patient care enabled ground-breaking clinical trials in a record time, which usually takes around 100 days, said NHSX chief executive, Matthew Gould.
This enabled rapid research into Covid-19 treatments such as dexamethasone, which saved over a million lives across the world and reduced coronavirus mortality, Gould said.
Revolutionary use of technology and data enabled setting up of new care services for people in their own homes through remote digital monitoring.
The data strategy also includes proposals to make the UK a leader in innovation-friendly regulation of AI technologies.
It also covers developing unified standards for the efficacy and safety testing of AI solutions and the path to market it.
“The new data strategy will set out our vision to go further, to learn from the pandemic, to save more lives with data, to use technology to ensure patient privacy is even better protected, and to give patients more control of their health records,” Gould said.
Dr Bryan Deane, director of data policy at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry lauded the launch of new data strategy.
“Data has been invaluable in our fight against Covid-19 and has been central to the joint work of the NHS and pharmaceutical industry to develop new treatments and vaccines,” he said.
“Together with the forthcoming Life Sciences Vision, we have a real opportunity to transform Britain into a life sciences superpower, where researchers are able to use health data to discover breakthroughs of the future,” Deane said.
