Open data drives new possibilities for health care
One of the great benefits of making data openly available is that it enables others to do new and innovative things with the data we hold. This can deliver far more value than our organisation ever could alone.
One of the best examples of how our open data has been used to deliver value is the OpenPrescribing.net developed by the Bennet Institute. This tool takes NHSBSA open data alongside data from other NHS sources and makes it freely available for users to view and analyse through a user-friendly interface.
The team from the Bennett Institute have published several academic papers documenting their methods along with evaluation of the impact of the tool on prescribing behaviours and cost efficiencies. The tool is widely used with 20,000 unique users every single month and thousands of subscribers to practice prescribing email alerts.
Over the years, the Bennett Institute team have also provided feedback around our open data offering which has helped guide improvements. This has included enhanced governance and communication around any changes to the data as well as moving the key data set from a publicly available portal which required users to login to one with API capability and no login requirement.
We also complement our open data provision by making some of our analytics code available enabling users to peer review our work and easily build on it. In addition, we provide statistical publications which offer users open access to simply worded summaries of key trends and user-friendly visualisations along with the underlying data meaning we can reach a broader audience who may be less analytically or technically inclined.
As we continue on our journey to being open by default, we hope to see further examples of how people use our data, whether it be individuals using them to hone their data and analytics skills, students using it for their projects or large-scale national initiatives like those of the Bennett Institute.