Latest NHS News

Professor Matt Sydes explains how we’re semi-automating the data provenance process to ease the admin burden on researchers and speed up clinical trials. A hard truth is that we need to improve the delivery of clinical trials. They are often large and time consuming for good reason. We need reliable findings and must protect against false positives and false negatives. If patients are already expected to do well or the treatment is only expected to make a modest improvement or we need to have greater certainty of the results, the trial will need to be larger and longer. And more time inevitably means more money.

Tanja Galloway talks about the work of the NHS App user research team – and the challenges of supporting a fast-moving, inclusive national service.  The NHS App recently achieved a significant milestone: most adults in England (34 million people) have now registered to use it.

Adam Hollings and Humaira Hussein talk about how NHS England Secure Data Environment service is powering life-saving research and treatments across the UK.  NHS England Secure Data Environment service is part of the Secure Data Environment network which is powering life-saving research and treatments across the UK. 

Chiara Garattini and Kate Burn explain how working in our Data and Analytics sub-directorate has challenged the assumptions of our user-centred design team. A big part of early work on projects typically involves helping our colleagues to focus a bit less on the characteristics of their products and the requirements of their internal processes, and to instead start by involving users to understand their needs. Therefore, it's been interesting to work on projects that required our team to get deep into the weeds of the process in order to, ultimately, put the focus back on users. 

Liz Gaffney, Head of NHS England's Secure Data Environment, reflects on the developments of the service one year on. In January, Michael Chapman blogged about our ambitious plans for the NHS England Secure Data Environment (SDE), starting with migrating customers to the service, testing its capabilities and processes, and then scaling up the service to handle wider use.