Recommendation 8

The OPSS’s lack of data has slowed its response to some serious areas of harm, such as small, high-powered magnets that led to 40 paediatric admissions in the UK in 2020 alone. Issues with these magnets have been reported for a number of years, but the OPSS did not initiate a response until 2021.11 It explained to us that it was first alerted to the issue by NHS paediatricians who had observed an increase in the number of operations to treat internal damage to children’s bowels. The OPSS is working to improve its intelligence base. For example, it is undertaking a pilot with five NHS hospitals to gather data on product-related injuries directly at the point of A&E. The OPSS noted the challenges in delivering this initiative, including building a consistent reporting mechanism which specifies important details on the causes of harm.12 The OPSS is also developing an overall data strategy, which the National Audit Office assessed as being a good start but less mature than in other parts of government.13 Influencing businesses and consumers