Speeches

Nicholas Soames – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2016-03-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to use big data in healthcare.

George Freeman

The pace of technological advance and digitisation of healthcare is transforming the way healthcare systems use data and informatics to provide individual care, system safety and performance, and research for new treatments and cures. The Government is committed to complete the digitisation of the National Health Service and, through the National Information Board and implementation of the Personalised Health and Care 2020 Strategy, to deliver a series of important digital milestones on the road to a paperless NHS by 2020.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre has set up a new Centre of Excellence for big data and data science under the Government’s Data Science Programme to support the use of big data and data science. Patient trust, confidentiality and consent is crucial to delivering the better use of data which is why the Government has commissioned Dame Fiona Caldicott to advise on the right approach to patient consent and ensuring confidentiality.