Dive Brief:
- The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is the project leader on the MyNHS site, which is currently in beta testing and designed to provide transparency to consumers, who can use the site to compare national and regional data about different health care resources.
- Currently available information covers hospitals, social care providers, public health providers, and other related services.
- Earlier this year, there was controversy when the NHS and the Health and Social Care Information Service (HSCIC) delayed a large NHS database after physicians and private citizens raised concerns that pharma companies could access the information and compromise patient privacy.
Dive Insight:
When a visitor logs onto the MyNHS beta site, they are greeted with the tagline “Open data for better services.” They then learn that they can see “key data used by NHS and local councils to monitor performance" and shape the services they use.
The goal of this project is to use technology to empower patients and to create a system that is intrinsically transparent and user-friendly. More time is needed to determine if there are any bugs in the system, and security will obviously continue to be the overwhelming concern.