By Dave Gerrish, Strategic Lead – Digital and Kimberley White, Strategic Lead – Health, at ukactive
Unlocking data sharing between the UK’s fitness and leisure sector and the NHS is essential for advancing a number of the Government’s health strategy objectives and unlocking mutual, economically viable opportunities. Through building a strong collaboration between health and physical activity, more innovative, preventative and sustainable health services can be co-created for the benefit of communities, organisations and address local and national health inequalities.
Last week, on Wednesday 22 October, ukactive, in partnership with Sport England, and NHS Horizons hosted a Digital Health event which brought together a selected group of leisure sector leaders, health policymakers and sport and physical activity organisations to focus on one of our core priorities: enhancing digital integration between leisure and health pathways.
The event was a continuation of the importance of digital skills and maturity, and wider ukactive work, to influence system change where the NHS actively works together with the leisure sector to improve health priorities. This area of work began to take shape last December, where ukactive convened a group of senior leaders from across the NHS – locally and nationally, the Government, the physical activity sector, political advisors and suppliers to help design the first ever blueprint for the relationship between the NHS and the physical activity sector. Here, we laid out eight key elements of that blueprint, and our event last week addressed number three: establish routine data sharing between the sectors.
Attendees included representatives from NHS Integrated care systems, Public Health Wales, Oxford University, the Open Data Institute and members from our sector, including Digital Futures core advisors, Gladstone, EGYM and Technogym, as well as Greater Manchester Moving, and members of the policy team from the Department of Health and Social Care, DWP Work & Health Directorate and OHID.
The event was facilitated by Dr Tim Anstiss, a medical doctor specialising in behaviour change and wellbeing improvement. Tim has been involved in numerous wider sector health projects, including Let’s Get Moving, and is an adviser to the Moving Medicine initiative, led by the Faculty of Sport and Exercise medicine. During the event, Tim led two thought-provoking and interactive sessions, using an Appreciative Inquiry approach used within NHS Education, on how the two sectors can work together to optimise data sharing.
What was discussed?
During the workshop, these partners came together to explore examples of what data practices are already working across the sector, how these examples could be scaled across the industry and importantly, how these practices could be replicated across the neighbourhood health initiative – helping support patients from hospital to community. For our industry and ukactive members, this means how we can support the NHS directing people into our facilities by aligning with its patient record systems, governance, user experience, interoperability and data sets.
So, what’s next for the digital element of this workstream?
As we move into the next 18 months – the first phase of this work – our shared ambition with the NHS is clear: to create a more standardised, connected approach to data integration across the health and leisure sectors. We will work with members to create a number of priorities and tangible steps in achieving the phase of this work in its development.
Improving how leisure data is shared with health services is essential for building trust between the two sectors and enabling more coordinated, effective and personalised support for people’s health and wellbeing. By using data to create joined-up opportunities across the leisure sector, we can make people’s journey into physical activity more seamless. With the right information and support, people can make informed decisions that align with their personal goals and motivations to get active.
Collaboration and co-design across sectors is essential if we’re going to get this right. Building trust through ethical and transparent data practices helps strengthen confidence, foster shared understanding and establish a genuine sense of common purpose.
The NHS have made it clear from their 10 Year Health Plan that they want to shift to a preventative care approach, and by working with the physical activity sector and ukactive’s members to share data, we can support this. The UK Government have also outlined that data sharing is a pivotal step to the economic growth of the nation with its National Data Strategy and UK wide digital health landscape predicted to boost the economy by £10 billion.
How else is this focus on data sharing important for ukactive members?
For ukactive members, the event was crucial in identifying appetite and desire amongst key decision makers and influencers to drive this area of work forward. There are a number of financially sustainable opportunities for both sectors, through evidence-based commissioning, outcome-linked funding models and the inclusion of our sector in NHS prevention and rehabilitation programmes.
Programmes such as MSK Hubs have been shown to improve care efficiency, boost revenue, increase sustained footfall and, through the use of data sharing, more of these opportunities can become available. If data is linked up with the NHS’ systems, referring patients out of hospitals and into our sector’s facilities will be simpler – making it easier for more people to access opportunities to be active.
Our work in this space will also require the support of ukactive members as we can all facilitate the NHS’ goal to shift towards preventative care and lessen the financial burden caused by inactivity, which currently costs the UK £20 billion annually. Modelling from Sport England indicates that embedding physical activity advice and referral into NHS pathways could produce 2.9 million fewer inactive adults and £0.9 billion in healthcare savings.
This session marked an important step in strengthening collaboration between the NHS, The Department of Health and Social Care and our sector. We hope in continuing to work together we can create a more integrated, data driven approach that supports healthier more active communities.
For further information and to be involved in the ongoing work in this area, please contact davegerrish@ukactive.org.uk (ukactive’s Strategic Digital Lead) or kimberleywhite@ukactive.org.uk (ukactive’s Strategic Health Lead)
