Data mapping company Parallel, part of the Hull-based Sewell Group, has developed a platform to host and analyse a national primary care database on behalf of NHSE.
It’s called Shape, and has been enhanced to display information about primary care services and the current estate available to help inform decision making and drive efficiencies for future delivery.
The NHS England General Practice Premises Policy Review 2019 identified the need for a more comprehensive primary care data set to support integrated clinical services and estates planning.
Parallel’s data mapping tool, SHAPE, was used to aid understanding of the current estate available within primary care that could be used to deliver services, the quality of the estate and how it was being utilised.
Jon Murphy of the NHS England Estates Directorate said:“SHAPE is enabling a data-driven approach to primary care estates planning. Having all of the estates and workforce information in one place, alongside easy to use analysis tools, is helping systems understand current capacity and how buildings could be best utilised to support future service demand.”
SHAPE can show information such as NHS boundaries, practice list sizes, contract information and dispensing information, as well as population demographics and projections, deprivation, and disease prevalence to help give PCNs and ICBs a holistic view of their areas. Users can drill down to PCN or even practice level to better understand their estate, overlaid with patient, workforce and other health projection information to understand where demand for services is currently and could be in the future.
