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Self Service PortalDiscovery Data Service
Discovery is an NHS-owned, open-source data service, funded in part by Endeavour Health Charitable Trust, that aggregates health and care data from multiple systems into a standardised common information model for easier access by professionals and citizens.
Discovery Data Service
Endeavour Health Charitable Trust contributes funds to the development and operation of an NHS-owned data service called Discovery. This is designed to help professionals and citizens access all relevant health and care data about a patient or population of patients.
The software that runs the service has been developed as open source. This service is designed to receive data from multiple systems in multiple formats and using standards such as FHIR and Snomed-CT it converts the disparate content into a common information model so that access by systems can be made simpler.
Overview
Discovery is based on the hypothesis that if health related data is brought together at the level of the individual, stored at the level of a medium-sized residential population, made available via a common information model, and used for individual and population based decision support, great benefits to health can accrue.
Two small examples of the way in which this data can be used include:
At an Individual Level:
When an NHS 111call handler receives a call from a citizen, if a system could analyse the primary and secondary care data in real time, and detect whether they have frailty, alert the call handler that a clinician should be consulted, a dangerous trip to hospital may be avoided.
At a Population Level
Using data from primary care and acute care combined, if a system could determine the small number of people with Asthma who appear to have a profile suggesting that they are at risk of death or prolonged hospitalisation, proactive intervention would save lives.
Discovery Data Service Status
The data service is live.
It currently stores and processes the data from 28 million linked organisational patient records in the UK.
It contains long term records on 14 million unique UK citizens who have been resident in London at some point in the last 30 years (including people who have left or died).
Data on individuals are held in a single common data model with data values represented by a super ontology composed of the world's leading health ontologies.
Data in Discovery is submitted by health providers who provide primary, secondary, and urgent care services to patients or clients.
Data is kept up to date in close to real time - at worst within 24 hours; see Latency of extract data feeds for more details
NHS London Data Linkage and Normalisation Service
These technologies form part of a broader set technologies, many of which have been used by a large scale NHS London Service Known as Discovery, covering a population of 7 million registered citizens.
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