Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of how healthcare data and digital information could be used to help reduce variations in asthma care across the UK.

The NHS Atlas of Variation in Healthcare for People with Respiratory Disease, published in 2012 provides information on regional variations in a variety of areas related to asthma including prevalence and hospital admissions.

The Atlas has been put together by a wide range of organisation including the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care, the British Lung Foundation and Asthma UK, and can be downloaded at:

http://www.rightcare.nhs.uk/index.php/atlas/respiratorydisease/

This information will allow researchers as well as those planning and commissioning NHS services to understand the impact of unwarranted variation on outcomes and to use the data to drive change locally so that care can be improved.