Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 24, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 29, 2019 - Sep 1, 2019
Date Accepted: Sep 3, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Overcoming Barriers to Working With NHS Open Data
ABSTRACT
- “Open data” is information made freely available to third parties in structured formats without restrictive licensing conditions, permitting commercial and non-commercial organisations to innovate. - In the context of NHS data, this is intended to improve patient outcomes and efficiency. - We regularly import and process more than 15 different NHS open datasets to deliver OpenPrescribing.net, one of the most high impact use-cases for NHS open data, with over 15,000 unique users each month. - This paper describes the many breaches of best practice around NHS open data that we have encountered. - In summary, these include: datasets that repeatedly change location without warning or forwarding; datasets that are needlessly behind a “captcha” and so cannot be automatically downloaded; longitudinal datasets which change their structure without warning or documentation; near-duplicate datasets with unexplained differences; datasets which are impossible to locate, and thus may or may not exist; poor or absent documentation; and withholding of data for dubious reasons. - We propose new open ways of working that will support better analytics for all users of the NHS. These include: better curation; better documentation; and systems for better dialogue with technical teams.
Citation
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Copyright
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