The National Health Service (NHS) is long overdue for a digital revolution—and revamping its approach to data lies at the heart of this transformation.

In 2024, NHS England made an important step in that direction when it began the rollout of the Federated Data Platform (FDP) to up to 240 NHS organisations. As the first large-scale deployment of a unified and standardised data platform across the NHS, the contract offered trusts and integrated care systems a golden opportunity to abandon fragmented and highly manual data models. Unlike legacy approaches, FDP enables real-time data integration across domains, unlocking high-value, repeatable use cases for individual organisations while strengthening the overall NHS data ecosystem through increased connectectivity and frictionless data flows.

Early adopters are experiencing clear benefits

University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) was the first NHS trust to adopt FDP as its core data warehouse—and its acute Canonical Data Model has the potential to become the standard for all acute NHS trusts. UHL has started to see tangible operational benefits: It’s already producing Emergency Care Data Sets and Commissioning Data Sets directly from FDP.

At UHL, a unified model ingests data from numerous systems, including Nervecentre, the E3 maternity information system, and BadgerNet. This input- and output-agnostic data model has fundamentally changed how UHL interacts with operational data, joining disparate data sets and uncovering insights that were previously invisible or cumbersome to gather. It also facilitates faster, more informed decision making and eases the pressure on overstretched analytics teams. FDP has reduced the national data submission burden on staff, while standardising data exposure to downstream systems has delivered significant efficiency gains. These solutions lay the groundwork for more research- and innovation-ready data sets.

A platform-based approach creates a single source of truth for performance data, allowing UHL to accelerate service line reporting. Now, clinical and operational leaders and trust executives have rapid access to the detailed financial, workforce, activity, and quality key performance indicators needed to transform performance improvements at pace.

UHL’s shift away from fragmented and manual data processing will be a key enabler for further automation, and transformative opportunities are already becoming clear (for use in rota reconciliation, for example). A common data model provides the contextual awareness required to prepare data for AI-driven waves of automation—and even more benefits.

Four criteria for FDP success 

Based on UHL’s experience, four criteria are needed to ensure that a centralised, connected approach to data is successful within the organisation—and catalyses broader change and enduring results. Organisations need:

1. Senior-level sponsorship: Everyone—from the C-suite to operational managers and senior stakeholders—has to believe that instant access to data can improve decision making and outcomes. Significant change management is needed to turn that belief into regular practice. Senior leaders need to help staff to see the benefits of directly querying data in real time vs. asking for a data export or waiting for a scheduled report.
2. Clear use-case prioritisation: When planning FDP rollout, NHS organisations should start by identifying their most time-consuming and value-driving processes. Then, choose use cases where faster and more informed decision making will deliver the greatest impact.
3. A platform-first approach: To achieve the full potential of a platform-first approach, hosting on FDP should be the default option, unless there is a compelling reason to use an alternative platform. To support this shift, many organisations will need to adapt their data and analytics team operating models.
4. Embedded, robust data principles: Historically, it has been challenging to execute data governance, quality, and integrity initiatives within the NHS ecosystem. A new data platform rollout presents a clear opportunity to embed and standardise these principles.

Conclusion

FDP uptake has potential to drive a digital revolution across the NHS, and its effects on automation and organisational behaviour are paving the way for a new era of data-driven decision making. With FDP, NHS providers can spend less time gathering, digesting, and querying data and focus on what really matters: improving patient outcomes.

Perfecting the data model today lays the foundation for tomorrow—when AI-ready data sets further supercharge operational performance, research, and innovation. 

The authors would like to thank Oscar Barnes and Moyo Kuku for their contributions.