Boston Consulting Group research reveals the importance of health care data

The Boston Consulting Group Center for Growth has published its report on healthcare data which shows overwhelming support from the public for unlocking the value of UK data and outlines how the opportunity to leverage healthcare data can be realised.

The ‘Towards a healthier, wealthier UK: unlocking the value of healthcare data’ report takes a closer look at how the UK can leverage healthcare data as well as tackle two of the most pressing challenges in society: the poor outlook for the economy and the burden on our healthcare system.

The topic of leveraging healthcare data has been raised many times in the UK, yet never really taken up. According to the Boston Consulting Group, it is important to gain public support in the use of health care data and then re-invest its value into the health care system.

Unlocking healthcare data has proven to have many benefits. For example, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust was able to save £2,000 on hospital admissions for patients with acute kidney injury by using an app that brought together data from blood tests, medical history and clinical decision tools to alert clinicians when risk was detected.

Elsewhere a Dutch network of seven teaching hospitals was able to reduce unnecessary patient stays by around 30%, and reoperations due to complications by up to 74%. To do this it implemented a value-based healthcare approach and defined the right metrics to improve outcomes before hospitals started sharing data.

Lord O’Shaughnessy, founder of Newmarket Strategy and former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Health, said: “If used correctly, healthcare data can improve both UK health and wealth.

“This can only happen if public trust is strong and the best way to achieve this is through a nationwide, comprehensive and dynamic process of public consultation and decision-making.

“As the BCG report and survey highlighted, when people are engaged on the details of health data use they are often more helpful than expected, but – quite rightly – they want to be involved in setting strategy.”

unlocking value

The report found that 90% of people are willing to share their data with the NHS for any purpose – contrary to the widespread misconception that the public’s default position is to oppose access to personal health data.

However, this public endorsement is dependent on how the data will be used. The use of healthcare data should be focused on driving positive outcomes around prevention, understanding diseases, clinical trials and clinical care – rather than focusing on processes as it is now.

The report found that 73% supported their healthcare data being used to help understand the likelihood of their disease, while 72% were happy that it would be used to enable improvements in clinical care processes.

Not surprisingly, the public was eager to join the conversation about the use of health care data. 73 percent wanted to be actively informed about the use of their data, highlighting the need to engage the public in a wider conversation on this issue.

This is something that is already happening in the capital. This month a meeting of a London Citizens Advisory Group finalized a set of recommendations that will help inform the work of the London Health Data Strategy.,

When it came to the issue of profit, most survey respondents were happy with their health care data being used to generate profit – but only some of the value is reinvested in the health care system or has widespread benefits.

Healthcare Data Recommendations

The Boston Consulting Group report ultimately made its own recommendations on how the value of health care data might be realized. This includes:

• Detail the consequences for specific use cases of making health care data more accessible to generate public support and understanding.
• Launch an inclusive public engagement campaign across all NHS data projects, specifically explaining how better data use can deliver tangible benefits.
• Use public decision panels and data use registers to involve the public in decisions about how their data will be accessed and used to ensure they have a say and a stake in the decision-making process.
• Establish a central fund to reinvest the value realized into local NHS systems.

Lord O’Shaughnessy said: “Politicians and policy makers must be bold and embark on a major public engagement program on this issue.

“They need to publicly shine a light on how and why healthcare data can drive meaningful change to the challenges facing the UK. Without this partnership, we risk missing the opportunity.”