IC and Newchurch partner to provide info services

The Information Centre for health and social care has announced a new partnership with commercial health information consultancy, Newchurch.

The partnership’s aim is to develop products and services to provide local health communities with the tools needed to support commissioning, investment, public health and risk management.

The work will primarily focus on four key analytical areas:

1. Competition capacity and choice – To provide information and develop models which will help Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to understand the implications of future diversity of provision and patient choice in healthcare.

2. Investment decisions – To provide models which assist PCTs in making medium to long term decisions around future healthcare provision and the appropriateness of alternative models of care

3. Public health intelligence – To monitor health trends and outcomes on a national and local-area basis. This will require the development of methodologies and tools to analyse data from a combination of national and local sources

4. Risk management – To identify sources of uncertainty in relation to demand-side issues, such as prediction of future service requirements, and supply-side issues, such as managing over-supply or under-supply of clinical services.

Information Centre (IC) chief executive, Professor Denise Lievesley, said: “Creating alliances and partnerships open up additional delivery channels for us, to ensure we are able to meet our aim of expanding the health information market, which will ultimately ensure better access to and more intelligent use of data.”

The IC and Newchurch are also aiming to create an e-library of analytic methods, models, and advisory services to underpin PCT commissioner decisions on the shape of local healthcare services, which will help to promote the more informed use of data.

Professor Lievesly added: “Opportunities exist for other commercial companies to work with us and a policy setting out our approach to commercial alliances is available from our web site www.ic.nhs.uk/commercial/ICfolder_view.”

The partnership is not a joint venture in the same sense as the controversial commercial joint venture between The Information Centre and Dr Foster, which created Dr Foster Intelligence in February this year. The IC says it is not investing in nor procuring any goods or services from Newchurch.