Create 2025-03-31-technical-research.md

Author: ralph-hawkins

app/posts/personalised-prevention-platform/2025/03/2025-03-31-technical-research.md

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+---
+title: "Technology research summary"
+description: A summary of technology within NHSE that could support personalised prevention work
+date: 2025-03-31
+tags:
+- discovery
+---
+
+As part of the Personalised Prevention Platform discovery, we examined the existing and planned NHS England technology platforms and products so we could understand what could be reused or extended, and what we might need to build from scratch.
+
+## Problem statement
+
+We need to understand the availability and readiness of the NHS platforms and data we could use to identify and select people with certain characteristics and risk factors.
+
+Our current problem statement will continue to evolve over the course of discovery and alpha as we learn more about the problem we are trying to understand, and the hypotheses we are aiming to prove or disprove.
+
+## Purpose
+
+This analysis aims to give a simplified view of what NHS services, platforms and data could be available to technical solutions in the personalised prevention space.
+
+We explored 4 overarching hypotheses in the Personalised Prevention Platform Discovery  However, for the purposes of technology research, we focused on these 2 hypotheses:
+1. There is a serviceable cohort of people who will proactively manage their health to reduce their need for future treatment.
+2. We will be able to reach people early enough before health issues become problematic.
+
+This analysis is aimed at Product and Service colleagues in NHS England so they can visualise and understand how the available technology and data can best be used to feed into design considerations.
+
+## Background
+
+In the context of this early‑stage technology research, personalised prevention can be prompted by proactive campaigns for cohorts of people with shared characteristics, clinical conditions and risk factors.
+
+## What we explored
+
+### Understanding more about how to create people cohorts with shared characteristics and risk factors
+
+We wanted to understand what NHS England:
+- technology we can use to create, manage and enable the cohorting of people with shared characteristics
+- data sets and collections we can use to create cohorts of people
+- technology we can use to communicate with cohorts of people
+
+## What we did
+
+### Research the relevant NHS technology and data landscape
+
+Our research included several NHS internal technology platforms and data sets. The main ones reviewed throughout this research are:
+1. NHS Patient Demographics Service (PDS)
+2. NHS Cohorting as a Service (CaaS)
+3. NHS GP Extraction Service (GPES)
+4. NHS Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)
+5. NHS Notify
+6. NHS App
+
+#### What NHS England technology we can use to create, manage and enable the cohorting of people with shared characteristics
+
+The conclusion is that we can use the NHS Cohorting as a Service (CaaS) platform to create and manage cohorts of people for national campaigns.
+
+#### What NHS England data sets and collections we can use to create cohorts of people
+
+CaaS currently has access to several data services, sets and collections that can allow the creation of patient cohorts:
+- Personal Demographics Service (PDS)
+- General Practice Extraction Service (GPES)
+- Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES)
+- Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT)
+- Radiotherapy Treatment Data Set (RTDS)
+
+#### What NHS England technology we can use to communicate with cohorts of people
+
+The conclusion is that we can use the NHS Notify platform to communicate with cohorts of people for national campaigns. This is because:
+
+NHS Notify is a national level strategic platform for messaging and communicating with citizens via SMS messages, emails, NHS App messages, and even physical letters.
+
+It can easily integrate with CaaS and therefore use it to communicate with cohorts of people created by the latter.
+
+It can also easily integrate with the NHS App, to send messages directly to its users. These messages can appear in the NHS App inbox and are accompanied by push notifications, such as banner or badge alerts, to ensure recipients are aware of new communications.
+
+## What we learned
+
+### We can already create people cohorts with shared characteristics and risk factors
+
+The following would still need to be approved by the NHS Information Governance and Clinical teams.
+
+There is a healthy level of maturity in the technology that allows us to define cohorts of people with shared characteristics and risk factors. CaaS, combined with a range of tools and technologies already used for immunisation campaigns, could be reused to create campaigns with a focus on personalised prevention.
+
+The key considerations are:
+
+1.  NHS CaaS and NHS Notify are live, and already supporting the rollout of campaigns for prevention (for example Immunisations).
+2. NHS Data sets and collections are ready and available through CaaS, but subject to NHS Information Governance, Legal and Clinical engagement and approval.
+
+## What we are doing next
+
+### If we want to create people cohorts with shared characteristics and risk factors
+
+The next steps are well defined given the high level of maturity of CaaS and its pre‑existing integrations to other national platforms (for example NHS Notify).
+
+1. The following is needed to create new citizen or patient cohorts for prevention campaigns:
+2. Refine the scope of the proposed cohorts and the data requirements.
+3. Formally engage all relevant NHS platforms teams (including CaaS).
+4. Secure and make funding available for all the required activities.
+5. Agree the legal basis for accessing and using the required data.
+6. Complete Information Governance (IG) activities resulting in an approved Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).
+7. Complete clinical assurance of the proposed cohorts.
+8. Create, test and assure the proposed cohorts.
+
+## What opportunities does this offer?
+
+Important – Subject to NHS Information Governance and Clinical approval, the technologies and data researched can enable opportunities to create cohorts of people with shared characteristics and risk factors.
+
+One of many examples for this could be creating and communicating with a cohort of people who lack knowledge and are under‑represented in accessing mental health services and resources. The cohort could be created based on one or more of these attributes:
+- age
+- location
+- an underlying health condition
+
+
+## Further information
+
+- [Personal Demographics Service - NHS England Digital](https://digital.nhs.uk/services/personal-demographics-service")
+- [Cohorting as a Service (CaaS) - NHS England Digital](https://digital.nhs.uk/services/cohorting-as-a-service-caas")
+- [NHS General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) - NHS England Digital](https://digital.nhs.uk/services/general-practice-extraction-service)
+- [NHS Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data - NHS England Digital](https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-tools-and-services/data-services/hospital-episode-statistics)
+- [NHS Notify – NHS England Digital](https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-notify")
+- [NHS App and your NHS account – NHS](https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-app/")