What is Discovery
Discovery can be conceptualised via 3 axes; The Discovery idea, the Discovery collaboration, and the actual set of systems that make up the Discovery data service.
The Discovery idea
The idea behind discovery is that if health related data is brought together at the level of the individual, and stored together at the level of a medium size residential population, that great benefits to health can acccrue as a result of algorithms operating on indvidual's data or on the population as a whole.
This idea is specialised to the need to bring data from many different providers and provider systems, and convert or map that data to common information model, in order that all the data can be accessed by a single language, as if it was designed as a single system. The main difference between Discovery and an organisational management system is that it sources data from many disparate domains and makes sense of the data, whether the data was originally recorded in a standard or non standard form. In other words, all the useful data entered over many years, becomes accessible in a modern and coherent form.
Examples of the way in which this data can be used include;
At an individual level. When an NHS 111 call handler receives a call from a citizen, the ciitizen's primary and swcondary care data is immediately analysis to detect whether they have fraility, thus resulting in directing the call to a clinician in order to avoid a dangerous trip to hospital.
At a population level. Using evidence from primary care, acute care, detect the small subset of people with Asthma who appear to have a profile suggesting that they are at risk of death or prolonged hospitalisation.
The Discovery collaboratives
An idea by itself is not enough. A Discovery collaborative is any local or regional group of providers and commissioners who are willing to work together to establish and own and control their Discovery Data Service. A collaboration applies the following philosophies;
- All technicologies, specfications and doecumentation is open source and available for all, including those not within the collaborative. This protects the collaborative against itself and provides the basis for other collaboratives to contribute in a mutually beneficial way.
- All collaboratives are of unlimited size. There is no limit to the members of a collaborative and collaboratives do not attempt to preclude others from joining. Having said that collaborations by the nature of the population coverage of a particular data service, will tend to be local or regional.
- The collaboration must apply the information governance policies common to Discovery. These include the retention of data controller status by providers, until data is transferred to subscribers as a result of consent by the providers, and the proper handling of identifiable and de-identified data