Almost all ICBs (98%) are now ‘on board’ with the Federated Data Platform (FDP), NHS England has said.
In an FDP bulletin, NHS England said a total of 124 trusts have signed up, including 114 acute trusts and 10 non-acute trusts, which represents 85% of acute trusts and 98% of ICBs who are ‘on board’. NHS England confirmed to Healthcare Leader that this was 41 of the 42 ICBs.
It added that 72 of these trusts are ‘currently in delivery’.
This is an increase from November 2024, when just two thirds (28) of ICBs and 87 acute hospital trusts had signed up to the FDP.
NHS England is actively engaging with community and mental health trusts to increase their participation, it said.
Will Monaghan, group digital chief information officer at University Hospitals Leicester Trust and University Hospitals Northamptonshire, which have both signed up to FDP, said in the bulletin that the FDP was ‘delivering tangible benefits at both our acute trusts’.
‘At UHN’s two sites (Northampton General and Kettering General), we’re live with Inpatients, Outpatients, and Referral to Treatment (RTT) modules and are currently onboarding with OPTICA,’ he said.
‘Meanwhile at UHL, we’re seeing positive outcomes with the Inpatients module. This is already delivering for patients, at UHN we’ve seen a 4.8% increase in booked theatre utilisation since adopting Inpatients and we’ve closed 18,000 RTT pathways since adopting RTT.’
The bulletin also noted an upcoming event tomorrow on ‘how to get started on FDP’ for trusts and ICBs, which will cover how to get started with training and building products on the platform.
The FDP platform, which collates data including the number of beds in hospital, the size of elective waiting lists, staff rosters and the availability of social care places, had an initial transition phase between March and May 2024, and is expected to be rolled out across the health service between May 2024 and March 2027.
It aims to help ICBs to proactively plan services that meet the needs of their local population.
Last week, the urgent and emergency care plan 2025/26 heralded the FDP as a way to boost flow through the hospital system.
Dr Tom Micklewright, clinical lead for digital transformation in primary care at Cheshire and Merseyside ICB, said it was ‘great news’ that so many had signed up to the platform.
He said: ‘The FDP will pave the way for better joined up care, allowing trusts and social care organisations to work more effectively with rapid access to the data they need when planning and delivering patient care.
‘Although the focus is on providing ICBs and hospital trusts with access to the FDP, I believe we’ll see the benefits in primary care too. Improved care coordination in secondary care will mean fewer patients ‘lost’ in the system; streamlined appointment management after referral; data sharing without requests for information from the GP; and improved discharges into safe community settings. All of this will reduce the burden on GPs to manage continuity gaps in the system.
‘Furthermore, the FDP will give ICBs a clearer view of population health data for strategic commissioning. This will be a key enabler of integrated neighbourhood working, allowing all health and care staff in the community to work in a smarter, more data-informed way, aligned to population health priorities.’
However, the FDP has been the subject of controversy among GPs and the wider NHS, with confusion about whether primary care data would or would not be included in the platform.
Dr Micklewright added as it stands it will not be included, which is a ‘significant gap’.
He said: ‘This may vary from region to region, depending on the availability of local data sharing agreements, but until an agreed national approach is taken to working with GP-held data assets, this gap will remain in many regions.’
In March, data chiefs also raised concerns that the FDP would not be able to meet the ‘bespoke’ requirements of local systems across the health service.
In an open letter to the chief data and analytics officer at NHS England, Ming Tang, the chair of the Chief Data and Analytical Officers Network, Dr Marc Farr, said the bespoke requirements of local systems were best met through ‘locally designed and managed infrastructure’.
Dr Farr added that these latest figures were ‘misleading’, as the FDP is ‘effectively mandated’.
He said: ‘We would note that Providers and ICBs have been effectively mandated to sign up for the FDP and that sign-up does not equate to usage – the figures are therefore misleading and it is interesting to note that given the mandate that the figures are not 100% across providers and ICBs.’
However, he added that the network believes the FDP can be a ‘key element’ of a federated data eco-system and a useful tool amid cuts to ICBs.
He said: ‘We believe that the FDP can be a key element of a federated data eco-system, as long as NHSE are quick to deliver all of the national datasets, support regions in establishing the governance to take GP data into the FDP and provide technical assistance and training where needed.
‘With the reduction to the number of ICBs and the number of staff within them we believe that the FDP could be a useful tool in the convergence agenda that is going to be necessary to deliver these deep cuts.’
Before the July 2024 election, the now health secretary Wes Streeting said the rollout of the FDP had been ‘too permissive’ and ‘lazy’.
The platform is supplied by a consortium led by tech company Palantir, which includes Accenture, PWC, Carnall Farrar and NECS. It was awarded the £330m seven-year contract in November 2023 following a procurement process, for up to 240 NHS organisations, both trusts and ICSs.
In February 2024, legal proceedings against NHS England were launched by law campaigners in a bid to ‘uncover’ the contents of the contract, which resulted in an updated contract being published in March 2024 with fewer redactions.
The BMA and its GP committee also previously expressed concerns over the high value of the contract and particularly how confidential patient data will be used.
