Sign-ups give birthday boost to NHS map agreement

12 May 2009, 10:02am

A national agreement setting the pace in the best use of healthcare maps has been hailed a success by NHS information analysts on its first birthday.

More than 120 NHS organisations including PCTs, strategic health authorities and NHS trusts are using mapping data from the NHS Digital Mapping Agreement to assess trends, health inequalities, investment priorities and resource allocation.

Ambulance trusts are also using the data for route planning, scenario modelling and emergency response.

Launched in May 2008 by the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care and the spatial data technologists Dotted Eyes, the centrally-procured agreement is designed to support the planning, delivery and analysis of health services over four years.

Members benefit from easy access to a pre-tendered data portfolio and support package. They pay a financial contribution based on the products they choose.

Colin Seward, Public Health Information Analyst at Mid Sussex PCT, said: “The agreement has opened up desktop analysis of a range of health-related map data to help with everything from encouraging healthy lifestyle choices to agreeing where to locate service facilities.”

Among the initiatives under way, growing numbers of PCTs are using mapping data to help with public health campaigns, service redesign and practice-based commissioning.

A prime example is Warrington PCT, where managers are looking at the extent to which deprivation patterns and the distance to hospital impact on unscheduled admissions. The work is informing overall priorities for commissioning healthcare.

Warrington’s public health analyst Tracy Flute said: “The mapping gives us an excellent visual means to present this information to PCT managers. We have more confidence in what we are presenting because you can often see trends and patterns much more clearly on a map than in tables of figures or spreadsheets.”

In other examples:
PCTs in Bristol and surrounding areas are using map data in travel time analysis to inform their options for reviewing cardiac and stroke services at A & E departments;

primary care managers in the West Midlands are using digital mapping to help decide where to target cold weather care for the elderly and who to include in healthy-eating campaigns;

the mapping of coronary mortality rates in Birmingham against GP-diagnosed heart disease has led to a project to improve case identification and chronic disease management programmes within GP-based primary care.


As well as data supply, the agreement includes a package of support, web resources and technical back-up. A series of dedicated training courses in GIS software for healthcare has equipped dozens of NHS delegates from across England with the skills to use the industry-leading MapInfo Professional package.

Dotted Eyes Managing Director Benjamin Allan said: “The response to the first year of the agreement has shown the potential of GIS to support strategic decision making on performance management, resource priorities and a whole range of other health-related activities.”

Susan Mayne, Head of Population and Geography at the NHS Information Centre, said: “This agreement offers NHS professionals an extremely useful resource to help ensure patients receive the best quality care. In addition, it can support joint working between different parts of the NHS and with partners such as local authorities and central government.”

Those eligible to receive data under the NHS Digital Mapping Agreement are primary care trusts, strategic health authorities, NHS trusts and all 11 English ambulance trusts.

The pre-tendered portfolio covers products from several providers including Ordnance Survey, NAVTEQ and Dotted Eyes. Among the products are postal and geographic address data, street level and road network maps, and boundary datasets enabling users to analyse and present essential information by ward, parish, PCT, service boundary or other statistical area.

To join the agreement, prospective members apply online to the NHS Information Centre who evaluate eligibility and respond within 24 hours. A member’s agreement and a standard licence agreement can then be completed enabling log-in access to a dedicated microsite for purchasing data.

Data installers are available to help non-technical managers in the user organisations by setting up all required files for rapid deployment.

www.dottedeyes.com/nhs

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