The National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership for Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) for Northwest London recently held a networking event to explore potential links between the NW London CLAHRC and GP Consortia in London. Amongst the speakers were myself; David Stout, Director of the Primary Care Trust Network, NHS Confederation; Dr Alan Cohen, Director of Primary Care, West London Mental Health Trust; Professor Derek Bell, Director, NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London; and Ganesh Sathyamoorthy, Head of Operations and Delivery, NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London. My talk at this meeting was on what role public health specialists could play in the new GP consortia. There are a number of areas in which public health specialists could support the new GP consortia, including needs assessment, planning health services, implementing preventive health care programmes, and evaluation of new programmes.
As part of a session on primary care data in the Health Informatics module on the Imperial Master of Public Health Programme, I asked students to work in two groups to present arguments for and against the NHS Care.Data programme. Care.Data is an NHS programme that will extract data from the medical records held by general practitioners (GPs) in England. The Care.Data programme takes advantage of the very high level of use of electronic medical records by GPs in England. After extraction, data will be uploaded to the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). The data will then be used for functions such as health care planning, monitoring disease patterns and research. The programme has been controversial with proponents arguing that the programme will bring many benefits for the NHS and the population of England; and opponents arguing it is a major breach of privacy. You can view the two presentations to help inform you further about these arguments: Arguments fo...
Comments