Intelligence-driven health and care: phase two

Abstract

Following on from the Design Summit in May, the Strategy Unit has continued to work on how Intelligence-driven health and care can improve outcomes for patients and local communities. The project, commissioned by MLCSU, aims to explore the emerging intelligence needs of the health and care sector as it moves towards place-based and integrated care systems. As part of the first phase of this work, we developed a set of design principles that are fully informed by evidence, best practice and cutting-edge technology – nationally and internationally. These can be found here: Design Principles The design principles are a means of moving from the evidence that has been gathered to a process for redesigning intelligence systems and strategies. We see the ‘Understanding what really matters’ principle as the most meaningful. This is because the evidence shows that the process should start by finding out what really matters to the population, patients / communities, clinical teams, managers and leaders. It should first establish the questions that they want answering, rather than focusing on ever growing amounts of data without any sense of the questions it is intended to address. In other words, thinking about ‘why?’ and ‘what?’ before getting to ‘how?’. A key input in the formation of the design principles was the set of case studies of US based Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs) – conducted by our partner organisation ICF. The intention of this exercise was to explore US ACOs approaches to the use of data, evidence analysis and business intelligence to identify what learning could be potentially transferable to health and care systems in England. The full report, which includes the case studies of the five selected US ACOs and the discussion and conclusions for the health and care sector, is available here: US based Accountable Care Organisations Case Studies Going forward, phase two of the project will be split into two elements. We will be working with a number of clients looking to apply the principles at system, integrated care provider, and neighbourhood levels, respectively We will also be looking to continue to build on the collaborative learning and knowledge exchange opportunities that have developed as a result of the work in phase one of the project