Consortium led by London CSU wins national contract to build population health dashboard

A consortium led by North East London CSU has won an NHS England contract to design and build a performance and population health management dashboard, Digital Health News has learnt.

The dashboard will hinge on Cerner’s HealtheIntent solution – a cloud-based platform that can collate data from various entry points including EPRs – and will be used by integrated care systems (ICSs) in England.

It is designed to allow ICSs to monitor population health and activity, with a view to identifying means of improving outcomes. Previously known as accountable care systems, ICSs are seen as the next step in reducing boundaries between different parts of local health and care systems.

Four of the 10 first wave ICS sites will develop the first iteration of the dashboard, with a view to roll out to other systems as the programme progresses.

The end-product is intended to be “an interactive, easy-to-use dashboard” that will help ICS sites “benchmark their system, understand the impact they are making and identify key opportunities to improve patient care”, North East London Commissioning Support Unit (NEL CSU) told Digital Health News.

It will also aim to enable more preventative healthcare through its ability to track, predict, intervene and manage conditions more cost-effectively.

Graham Crawford, the CSU’s director of analytics, said the project would “drive real benefits for patients” by allowing health professionals to develop an understanding of population health analytics and help NHS England and emerging ICSs keep populations healthy.

An NHS England spokesperson said the contract was awarded to NEL CSU after a “competitive tender and evaluation process which included leaders from the NHS”.

The CSU bid for the contract in partnership with Cerner alongside Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP) and Optimedis Cobic UK, an organisation that provides support for local health and care partners in delivering integrated care systems.

Dr Nicholas Hicks, of Optimedis Cobic UK, told Digital Health News: “The dashboard [will] be used across the country to help NHS England, local systems, and, we hope, the public to whom the NHS is ultimately accountable, understand how well the NHS and its partners are using tax payers’ money to improve health, quality and experience of care and the use of resources.”

The consortium will be supplemented with input from international sites in the US (Memorial Hermann and Advocate Physician Partners) and Germany (Gesundes Kinzigtal).

Dr Justin Whatling, Cerner’s global vice president for population health, said: “The journey towards integrated care and population health management will be underpinned by powerful and actionable data analysis from across the health and care system.

“The combined expertise of this partnership and other innovating health and care systems, coupled with the capabilities of our HealtheIntent platform, will provide the insight required to support organisations across the country to improve the quality and efficiency of care for their citizens.”

Earlier this month, Digital Health News reported that a small number of health economies had been invited to bid for Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHCRE) status. The stated aims of LHCRE start with supporting direct patient care, but in the longer term population health management is expected to be a key focus.