Why we need a Healthier Together Intelligence Centre
Health and care organisations use data every day to manage and plan services. This data shows us what works and what doesn’t.
Together, as an Integrated Care System (ICS) partnership of 10 organisations across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, we want to improve how efficiently we share our data.
Every time someone visits their GP, hospital, or other health and care services, they share information which is useful for planning and operational purposes.
Currently, each provider stores this data separately, sometimes in different formats, making it hard to share. The Healthier Together Intelligence Centre aims to fix this. It will be a central hub for all health and care data in our area.
Data from all of our ICS partners will flow into one secure place and be standardised for easy access to compare, map trends and undertake analysis for management and operational use.
The main benefits of the Intelligence Centre
Currently, information does not flow easily between our organisations and systemwide data is only available to NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board (ICB).
The Intelligence Centre, which will start being used from January 2026 and will be fully completed in 2028, will transform how we use this data. Everything will be in one secure place, enabling us to:
Plan better and make informed decisions
Improve performance and efficiency
Digitise our ICS joint working processes
Help us to quickly identify problems before they escalate
Standardise ways of presenting information in a user-friendly format
Ensure that information can be accessed via a single route
Simplify ways to feedback and suggest content
Make guidance and support visible
Consider public needs throughout the journey
Result in better outcomes and improve patient experience.
If we don’t make these changes and our data remains less accessible to our decision makers, NHS resources in our region will not be used as efficiently as possible.
In addition, less will be known about how to improve the health of some groups of patients.
With everything in one place, we will be able to plan better, improve performance, and prevent problems before they escalate. Most importantly, this will result in better outcomes and improve our patients’ experience.
The Intelligence Centre is part of our local transformation work in line with national NHS and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) guidance.
Watch Understanding Patient Data’s video
Understanding Patient Data has made a short video about why it’s important to use patient data to improve health, care and services across the NHS.
