HEALTH DATA INFRASTRUCTURE

The National Health Service (NHS) is the largest health care provider in the UK. It is split into 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), responsible for assessing local need and commissioning care in their area rom GPs hospitals and other providers. In addition, PCTs provide some care themselves, such as community nursing.

Data are routinely collected by these and other health organisations, sometimes because of statutory requirements (e.g. reporting births to the Office for National Statistics, ONS), and sometimes as inputs to local and national health information systems.

Patient level data are coded with patient NHS-number, name, address and postcode. Postcodes are used for aggregating data to higher levels; typically wards (average 5000 population) or for specific studies where patient level attributes, e.g. ethnicity, are used for analysing equity among users of health services or for epidemiological studies.