NHS: Databases
(asked on 1st June 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of additional administrative time and resource requirements for NHS organisations associated with the implementation and operation of the Federated Data Platform not specified in the FDP procurement contract.
The NHS Federated Data Platform (NHS FDP) safely connects information from different systems across the National Health Service into a single, secure environment. This allows staff to co-ordinate care better to improve outcomes for patients.
The NHS FDP is delivering for the NHS, helping people get the care they need quicker and more efficiently. Since March 2024, more than 100,000 additional patients have been supported to undergo procedures in theatres partly by increasing theatre utilisation. Nearly 94,000 people have been supported on their cancer journey, with 7% seeing a reduction in the time it took to diagnose their cancer. There has been a 14% decrease in delays discharging patients staying in hospital for more than seven days, freeing up beds for those who need it most. NHS England publishes quarterly information on benefits realised from the FDP, which is available at the following link:
To date, 24 integrated care boards clusters and 168 NHS trusts have signed up to the NHS FDP, including the Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust.
The NHS FDP programme provides centrally funded implementation support to NHS organisations, including technical, training, and business change resources, delivered through national, regional, and local teams. This approach is designed to minimise additional administrative burden while supporting effective and sustainable adoption.
NHS organisations retain responsibility for local delivery and adoption, consistent with standard practice for digital and transformation programmes. Local input is required across operational, technical, and change functions to support implementation and embedding into routine practice.
The NHS FDP delivery model combines centrally provided support with local resource mobilisation. Implementation is supported through a layered model: national teams provide centrally funded training and guidance; regional teams coordinate and assure delivery; and local NHS FDP delivery teams provide hands-on deployment and onboarding support. Together, these layers are intended to reduce the burden on individual NHS organisations while supporting local adoption.
Local resource requirements vary depending on the product deployed and organisational context. Typical deployment models include operational roles, technical roles and change, training, and support roles through the implementation period, typically consisting of two Whole Time Equivalents through the six-week implementation in total. These inputs would be expected to peak during implementation and then reduce once the platform is embedded into business-as-usual operations.
These inputs are generally time-limited, with effort peaking during onboarding, technical deployment, validation, and training, before reducing as solutions are embedded into business-as-usual operations.
Following implementation, organisations are expected to maintain proportionate ongoing administrative and service management support, consistent with other digital systems. This typically represents a fractional and ongoing commitment, rather than a full-time resource, and varies according to scale and usage.
No formal system-wide estimate has been made of additional administrative time and resource requirements beyond those specified to trusts when signing to join the NHS FDP, as these are locally determined and dependent on implementation choices, product mix, and organisational context.