The Faculty of Clinical Informatics is pleased to have been commissioned by the NHS England/Improvement Transformation Directorate to help them with consultation on their Standards and Interoperability Strategy.  The draft strategy and details about how to get involved in the consultation can be found below.

To improve levels of interoperability across the NHS through the development and adoption of standards, the NHS Transformation Directorate Standards and Interoperability programme has drafted its strategy entitled: “How Standards Will Support Interoperability”. It aims to provide an overview of the challenges and opportunities, clarify definitions of key terms and outline the main proposed solutions.

The NHS Transformation Directorate unites colleagues from across NHS Digital, NHS England and NHS Improvement and the Department of Health and Social Care behind a common goal: to drive innovation at scale in order to improve health and care for people and support staff.

This strategy should to be considered in conjunction with the Data Saves Lives: Reshaping health and social care with data and the forthcoming Data Architecture Strategy, as a fundamental building block to help achieve both.

Data-driven technologies have so much potential for our health and care system, but we can only unlock this potential if we have the right technical infrastructure in place. Data is a shared asset, and as we break down the organisational silos that hold data, we must rebuild them on the foundations of a unified architecture, open standards and better interoperability, to enable the best use of this asset.

The proposed strategy has been drafted in collaboration with stakeholders from across the health ecosystem. The NHS Transformation Directorate and its engagement partner, FCI are looking to gather feedback on the draft strategy from a wide range of voices who have an interest in digital health, including developers, clinicians, commissioners, patients and the public, to ensure it is robust, ambitious and attainable.

We welcome your feedback on the strategy. During May virtual focus groups will be held and an online survey is available for your written comments: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/nhs-strategyconsult

If you would like to provide comments by email, you are welcome to do so, please email strategyconsult@fci.org.uk

If you are commenting on social media, we would be grateful if you could please use the hashtag #NHSinteropstrategy and we will monitor this hashtag.