The FAIR Case for A Coherent Interoperability to support NHS 10 Year Health Plan

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Data Governance
• Health Information Systems

Background:

• Effective patient-centered care in the National Health Service (NHS) relies on timely access to comprehensive patient data.
• Fragmented health and care systems in England present challenges to creating longitudinal patient records due to organizational, technical, and governance complexities.
• Current interoperability efforts often focus on technical solutions, neglecting the crucial alignment of standards, governance, and organizational capabilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the role of data and standards management in achieving coherent interoperability within the NHS.
• To propose the FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) as a unifying framework for advancing interoperability in direct care.
• To inform future standards governance, policy, procurement, and legislation for the NHS 10-Year Health Plan.

Main Methods:

• Literature review and analysis of existing research on health data interoperability.
• Exploration of the application of FAIR Principles in health research initiatives.
• Conceptual framework development for integrating standards, governance, and implementation.

Main Results:

• Coherent interoperability requires a unifying framework beyond isolated technical solutions, integrating standards, governance, and implementation.
• The FAIR Principles offer a potential framework to guide the coordination of data governance and standards stewardship for direct care systems.
• Extending FAIR-informed approaches from health research to direct care can provide a scalable and sustainable model for NHS interoperability.

Conclusions:

• A unified, FAIR-informed framework is essential for overcoming fragmentation and complexity in NHS data infrastructure.
• Implementing FAIR Principles in direct care can significantly improve data accessibility, sharing, and reusability, supporting patient-centered care.
• This approach can guide policy and standards development to achieve more consistent and effective health information exchange across the NHS.