Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Accepted in Part
Establish a national system for sharing and analysing clinical negligence data to improve patient safety.
Recommendation
We are concerned there is far too little data on the factors behind clinical negligence, given its huge impact on people’s lives and NHS finances. Behind every clinical negligence claim is a tragic incident of patient harm. We were disappointed that neither the Department nor NHS England could adequately explain how the NHS uses its extensive data on patient harm to identify and address the underlying causes of clinical negligence. Data is not routinely reviewed at a national level as NHS England claim there is no direct connection between data on patient harm 4 and clinical negligence claims. NHS Resolution has committed to making better use of its extensive claims database and to explore options to extract more detailed insight on the causes of harm to prevent the same things happening again. However, we remain concerned that poor investment in data analytics will leave the NHS lagging behind the private sector, where legal firms are now using artificial intelligence to triage clinical negligence claims on an industrial scale. One person we spoke to at our private roundtable described the English NHS having a plethora of data and no information, adding that we need more NHS data in one place. recommendation a. The Department should establish a national system for sharing data between trusts and analysing trends. If there are barriers to sharing protected data, it should develop analysis on an anonymised basis to pull out lessons and provide early warning alerts to trusts. b. The Department, NHS England and NHS Resolution should explore the use of artificial intelligence to analyse live data, detect discrepancies and outliers quickly, and improve the speed of early warning systems.
Government Response Summary
The government rejects establishing a new national data sharing system, citing existing arrangements. However, it agrees to explore using artificial intelligence to analyse live data, with NHS England assessing machine learning algorithms for patient safety events and the Federated Data Platform, and NHS Resolution exploring AI for claims data analysis.
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented This work is underway. NHS England is actively developing and evaluating AI models on Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) data, including topical analysis and novelty detection approaches, to identify discrepancies, emerging themes and unusual risk patterns earlier. This work will directly support a more responsive early warning capability across the NHS by enabling faster detection of outliers and strengthening human led safety assessment. NHS England is also undertaking work to assess the feasibility of enabling secure, real-time analytics via the Federated Data Platform (FDP) to underpin a scalable national infrastructure for AI assisted safety surveillance. This includes exploring market solutions capable of analysing largescale free text and incident data, with the aim of improving the speed and consistency of early warning systems and reducing manual burden. NHSR is also looking at how AI can be used to analyse data to learn more about the underlying causes of claims. NHSR recognises that sharing its data with NHS England provides a full picture of potential harm.