Supporting transparency and open data

The transparency agenda is a pan-government initiative, in which healthcare data figures prominently.

What are the benefits of open data?

We are bringing together clinical service and outcome data held centrally in England into one place, so that it can be linked and analysed in ways that will better inform the delivery of care and services. Patients, academics, data intermediaries and other organisations can access the data and make comparisons that enable more informed choices.

Transparency is key to:

• improved outcomes and productivity in our public services
• promoting higher quality and more efficient services, choice and accountability
• driving economic growth by enabling the development of tools to support users, commissioners and providers of public services

What is the Health and Social Care Information Centre doing?

We recognise the huge opportunities that open data brings in:

• increasing patient choice
• improving patient outcomes
• delivering increased productivity
• contributing to the economic growth agenda

We are leading the way in health open data and, wherever possible, releasing the data underpinning all of our statistical publications to encourage others to make use of the depth of data available. We have made 680 data sets available since 2011 and are working with the public and private sector to enable value-added use of this data.

We also act as agent for the Department of Health in the routine publication of data through a range of channels including our own website and through www.data.gov.uk, the UK Data Archive, the UK National Statistics Publications Hub, and through NHS Choices.

Access health open data

All data published under the transparency agenda is labelled 'open data' in our catalogue. The data is also available at data.gov.uk (external)

• Go to  open data in the catalogue 
• Go to  data.gov.uk (external)

What data is available?

These commitments include the release of data, under the terms of the Open Government Licence, on:

• Prescribing by GP practice
• Complaints by NHS hospital
• Data from the National Lung Cancer Audit
• Data from the National Bowel Cancer Audit
• Data from the Oesophago-gastric Cancer Audit
• NHS Complaints

Data from National Clinical Audits

• Data from the National Lung Cancer Audit
• Data from the National Bowel Cancer Audit
• Data from the Oesophago-gastric Cancer Audit
• Data from the Paediatric National Diabetes Audit
• Data from the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit

Open data platform

Read how we are developing an open data platform to enable comprehensive and secure access to health and social care data for secondary use purposes.

Data.gov.uk

Our data is also published on the  data.gov.uk (external) website which contains over 5,400 data sets from all central government departments and a number of other public sector bodies and local authorities.

Open government licence

The entire contents of our website and the individual articles and other items published are protected by copyright except where made available through the  open government licence (external). All data subject to the open government licence will be identified as such.