The recent cyber-attack on the NHS has highlighted the reality of data risk, particularly in public services. The ongoing modernisation and increasing digitisation of healthcare raises concerns about data security and patient privacy among a growing population of service users. Recent data shows that there were an estimated 600 million patient interactions across the service in 2023/24.
The sheer number of medical records, appointment details and personal information stored and shared amongst different parties involved in the treatment and care of patients across the healthcare ecosystem heightens the risk of data mismanagement. While it is evident that modernisation is imperative to effectively serve the growing number of NHS patients, it is not inconsequential.
The NHS faces challenges in securing sensitive patient information while complying with evolving data protection regulations and interoperability between disparate healthcare systems. This not only impacts the integrity and safety of data, but also service continuity. So how can healthcare organisations in both the private and public sector protect patient data, whilst digitising and making it accessible to the people who need it the most?
The Challenge with Modernisation
The NHS needs technological reform. As we become more entrenched in an interconnected environment, it is essential that healthcare is aligned with this trajectory, both to meet patient expectations and to deliver on its core missions. However, with great change comes great challenges.
The NHS is often considered a gargantuan, bureaucratic monolith. The truth, though, is that it comprises many siloed micro-cultures that operate in unique ways. As such, achieving seamless interoperability across different healthcare systems and electronic health records is an ongoing challenge. The lack of standardised data formats and communications protocols hinder the exchange of information between platforms, organisations, and ultimately patients.
Regulatory compliance is another ongoing concern. Healthcare organisations face the challenge of navigating complex and evolving regulatory environments, including compliance with standards such as the GDPR. The UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has published new guidance for health and social care organisations to encourage transparency around the use of personal information in the face of increasing technology use and valuable data
harvesting.
The red thread throughout these challenges is the intrinsic role that data plays in healthcare systems – past, present, and future versions of it. To cultivate a transparent and all-encompassing NHS, we must first take a better approach to data access and data management.
Data Risks in Healthcare
Data is the crux of innovation. It’s the raw material that provides the catalyst for growth within organisations. Using it in the right way within healthcare can deeply impact and improve the lives of many. Nevertheless, with every reward comes risk, and the utilisation of data is no different.
A significant number of breaches occur in the cloud. What is alarming though is the time that it can take to detect and address these breaches. It can take over 200 days to identify and almost 80 days to contain, with costs running into the millions. This is a cost that the NHS can’t afford to bear, and the impact is far-reaching. Due to this, securing data is paramount, in the delivery of an effective healthcare system.
However, security is just one data risk for healthcare, while compliance is another. The privacy and protection of patients, the rules governing how long you can retain their data, and data sovereignty, are all considerations in the data landscape. Healthcare provider should dig deeper to find who is using the information and where that data is being used. Regulatory compliance and reporting are core to creating and delivering a transparent service that safeguards users’ most important information.
Currently, the NHS has multiple data systems that do not talk to one another, and whilst some initiatives are in place to address this, these are currently based on the largescale replication of distributed data and securing it in multiple ways. Siloed information between teams is a barrier that needs to be overcome. The copies of data distributed within separate services compounds the risk and the cost. and it potentially causes information to become stagnant.
All of this has the potential to negatively impact service continuity – a risk we cannot take with society’s health.
Logical Data Management
This is where logical data management platforms, built on data virtualisation, plays a key role. By quickly and cost effectively integrating disparate data sources without replication, optimising query requests and building a centralised governance architecture, data virtualisation enables organisations to access the data they need faster, boosting productivity and saving vital healthcare funds.
Data virtualisation combines all formats of data in real time, with strong security and governance capabilities. This gives healthcare teams a 360-degree view of patient health data, as well as peace of mind that policy and regulations can be easily followed. A data fabric approach, enabled by data virtualisation, will help healthcare organisations take this one step further by automating data management functions using artificial intelligence and provide additional semantic capabilities through data cataloguing, data preparation, and data modelling. It helps to reduce the burden on IT teams and data engineers, whilst enabling data scientists and citizen analysts to quickly and intuitively get what they need to build models and develop insights. Put simply, data fabric helps to improve organisational flexibility and agility while supporting patients effectively.
Technology is essential to enable new capabilities that healthcare companies need to deliver. The private and public sectors are already merging to provide interoperability and personalised medical services. The ability to provide real-time data access to growing and widespread data sources will underpin the success of this rollout by providing access to healthcare data at the speed of the need. It enables healthcare organisations to strike the right balance between providing vital access to holistic and timely patient data to improve care, whilst strongly securing this access in a unified and pragmatic manner.
