Delivering a roadmap for standards

NHS England and NHS Improvement is developing a standards roadmap which will provide a list of proposed and developing data, information and technical standards, including potential changes to existing standards. This forms a commitment in ‘Data saves lives: reshaping health and social care with data (draft)’ and will be live from April 2022. It is planned that a working version of the standards roadmap will be published on the NHS England website by January 2022 to enable review and feedback by interested stakeholders.

Feedback to date has indicated support for such a tool, and has welcomed the opportunity to influence the development. The opportunity to engage with developers to inform organisations is viewed as helpful to organisational planning. We would welcome further feedback following the launch of the standards roadmap.

This standards roadmap will enable key stakeholders to:

• inform prioritisation of commitments and delivery
• access a system-wide overview of standards and estimated timescales
• provide opportunity to engage with the Standards & Interoperability team and standards developers to reduce duplication and burden
• enable the health and adult social care organisations and suppliers to plan the implementation of standards.

The standards roadmap will grow to include details of data collections (some of which are published as information standards under the powers of the Health and Social Care Act 2012). This comprehensive scope is meant to ensure the needs of all stakeholders are met, and also to identify any potential duplication early on in the development cycle. The standards roadmap will be a continually evolving tool, both in terms of the metadata presented, and the items captured.

Get in touch and get involved

If you would like more information about the programme please direct your enquiry to interop.standards@nhsx.nhs.uk.