A prototype has been created to provide health service data for Scotland, by the country’s Information Services Division (ISD).

The ISD aims to use the prototype to bring a new healthcare data platform to the public, with the initial focus being on the statistics of hospital data activity. The prototype’s first source of information will be from quarterly acute hospital activity and NHS Beds Publication, with all information being accessible to the public through a beta formant on ISD’s website.

The hope is that the platform will allow ISD to create a new, improved way of publishing performance statistics from healthcare organisations that are easily understood and accessed by the public.

ISD opens up healthcare data platform to the public in Scotland
The prototype will allow the public to see all statistics from hospital data

Providing health information and statistical services around healthcare in Scotland, the ISD said this new prototype is the first step towards increasing the value of the information it provides. Associate director and head of profession for Statistics at ISD, Scott Heald, said: “I am delighted to see the launch of our new publishing platform, which is the first stage in modernising how ISD publishes its official statistics.”

Publishing the data on a public site aims to encourage users to give feedback to the organisation on how they present the statistical information, for what they want to see and how it affects them now and in the future.

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The data published on the site will only consist of hospital data for now, with ISD planning to expand this further in the future depending on what the public feedback regarding the new version of the platform.

Heald said: “Users are at the heart of what we are doing, and we’re very grateful to those users who have worked with us in the development of this prototype.

“This is an initial release to allow us to gain feedback from as wide a range of users as possible to inform how we develop the publishing platform as the means for publishing all our official statistics in future.”