OPTICA – Discharge Management

OPTICA supports patient flow and discharge planning, including multidisciplinary and cross-boundary working with health and social care.

It provides visibility of patients’ discharge status, outstanding actions and barriers to discharge, with the aim of improving coordination, reducing delays and supporting patient flow ie helping to get patients home from hospital as soon as it is clinically safe to do so.

RTT Validation – Referral to Treatment

RTT Validation is currently deployed to Airedale’s central validation team across all clinical specialties.

It brings pathway information into a single workspace to support waiting-list validation,  –  putting patient pathway information in one place, making it easier for staff to manage waiting lists, identify and fix data issues, ensure patients receive the right care at the right time, and check that they are on the correct pathway.

Identifiable Patient Information

Both applications use identifiable information because they support the operational management of individual patients and pathways.

Patient demographics used are limited to:

• Name
• NHS number
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Postcode
• GP

This is combined with the relevant operational information required for the particular application.

For OPTICA this includes admission and ward information, discharge readiness, discharge actions, reasons for delay and length of stay.

For RTT Validation it includes referral details, waiting-list information, RTT clock information, appointment activity, specialty and consultant information, pathway events and validation actions.

Data in the NHS Federated Data Platform remains under NHS control at all times.

The supplier will not control the data in the platform, nor will they be permitted to access, use or share it for their own purposes.

The supplier of the NHS Federated Data Platform will only operate under the instruction of the NHS when processing data on the platform. The supplier will not control the data in the platform and will not be the data controller. The contract has strict stipulations about confidentiality, and there is governance in place to monitor delivery and usage of the NHS Federated Data Platform.

NHS England is the data controller of the national instance of the NHS Federated Data Platform.

Every hospital trust and integrated care board who has their own instance of the NHS Federated Data Platform, has complete control over who has access to their data platform.

So, Airedale remains responsible for the personal information processed within our local FDP instance and determines how our local instance is used.

Access to data must have an explicit aim to benefit patients and/or the NHS in England.

Access to NHS health and social care data within the NHS Federated Data Platform will be carefully controlled. Only authorised users will be granted access to data for approved purposes. The supplier will not control the data in the platform, nor will they be permitted to access, use or share it for their own purposes.

The supplier of the NHS Federated Data Platform will only operate under the instruction of the NHS when processing data on the platform. The supplier will not control the data in the platform and will not be the data controller. The contract has strict stipulations about confidentiality, and there is governance in place to monitor delivery and usage of the NHS Federated Data Platform.

Only authorised users will be granted access to data for approved purposes, for example, NHS staff and those supporting them, such as administrators, bed managers or care coordinators, and staff in social care supporting the move from hospital care. Every hospital trust and integrated care board who has their own instance of the NHS Federated Data Platform, will have complete control over who has access to their data platform.

All data is stored, processed and accessed within the UK – there is no overseas processing of any type of data, all data is held in UK data centres and doesn’t leave the UK, and it is a contractual requirement that personal data stored in the NHS FDP and NHS-PET (Privacy Enhancing Technology) cannot be accessed by its provider’s personnel or contractors based outside the United Kingdom.

There are no products that hold immigration status or residency status within the NHS Federated Data Platform and immigration data or residency data does not form part of NHS England data collections or form part of health record data.

As with any data field, if there was a future request for a product to include immigration or residency status data it would be subject to NHS England Information Governance processes including a thorough assessment to ensure that the processing of this data was lawful.

Palantir is not permitted to use or share Airedale patient information for its own purposes. It operates as a Data Processor under NHS instruction.

Airedale remains responsible for the personal information processed within our local FDP instance, and its use remains subject to UK data-protection law, the common law duty of confidentiality and NHS information-governance requirements.

It depends upon the application.

For our current uses, patient demographics are limited to information such as name, NHS number, date of birth, gender, postcode and GP.

For OPTICA this is combined with relevant admission, ward and discharge information.

For RTT Validation it is combined with relevant referral, waiting-list, appointment and pathway information.

Only information necessary for the particular purpose should be processed.

Because the two applications Airedale currently uses support the management of individual patients.

We cannot coordinate the discharge of a particular patient or validate whether a particular patient’s waiting-list pathway is correct without identifying which patient we are dealing with.

The two applications Airedale currently uses are based on defined information needed for discharge management and RTT validation. They are not being used by Airedale as a general-purpose Electronic Patient Record.

The National Data Opt-Out provides an individual with a right to opt out of their confidential patient information being used for purposes beyond their direct care, unless an exemption applies. More information about exemptions is available here: https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/where-your-choice-does-not-apply/

In relation to data being processed on the Federated Data Platform the following applies:

The National Data Opt-Out does not apply to data processed in the FDP because:

• National Instances – No confidential patient information is being processed by a Product in the National Instances of FDP to which the National Data Opt-Out would apply.
• Local Instances – Confidential patient information that is being used in the FDP in a Product in a Local Instance is only being used for the purposes of direct care and therefore the National Data Opt-Out does not apply.

Type 1 opt-outs which are activated by patient preference for the use of GP data do not apply to data processed in the FDP because:

• No confidential patient information that has come from a GP Practice is being processed by a Product in the National Instances of FDP.
• Confidential patient information that has come from a GP Practice which is being used in the FDP in a Product in a Local Instance is only being used for the purposes of individual care.

More information about why the National Data Opt-Out does not apply to data being processed in FDP products is set out in each Product Privacy Notice.

Our role is not to defend or comment on Palantir’s wider commercial or geopolitical activities. Our responsibility is to ensure that Airedale uses patient information lawfully, securely and appropriately.

NHS England ran an independent procurement exercise, and the choice of preferred supplier was the result of assessment by many different individuals.

NHS England has a duty to treat all suppliers the same regardless of the public perception of any organisation, or the opinions held by any of their shareholders.

The NHS Federated Data Platform contract was awarded in November 2023 and formally began in March 2024.

Any decision to extend the contract will be taken by Ministers in line with governance and regulatory processes.

More information on the contract process is available on the NHS England website: Contract explainer.

Concerns regarding the national procurement or supplier selection should appropriately be raised with NHS England, and we can ensure concerns raised with Airedale are reflected back to them: NHS England » Contact us

Different Trusts have different existing systems, capabilities and requirements.

At Airedale we need to assess the platform against our own clinical and operational needs, patient benefit, information governance, security and value, alongside national requirements.

We can’t comment on decisions reportedly made by individual Trusts without knowing their particular circumstances.

That is something we should judge on evidence.

For Airedale, OPTICA provides a shared operational view of discharge across teams and organisational boundaries, while RTT Validation brings pathway information together to support validation and waiting-list management.

We should continue to assess whether those uses deliver the benefits expected rather than assume technology is beneficial simply because it has been deployed.

Our immediate focus is on the products we already have.

There are plans potentially to expand RTT Validation beyond the central validation team to service managers, team leaders, administrative teams and specialty-based users within Airedale following implementation of our Electronic Patient Record.

We are also considering future Unified Pathway Management functionality and potentially extending OPTICA into Airedale’s community services.

These are future developments and are not additional live uses today.