NHS North Thames combats data heterogeneity by implementing high quality data mapping to leverage value and gain full visibility across their data landscape.
The North Thames NHS Genomic Medicine Centre has been set up to help gain a better understanding of the genetic causes of cancer and rare disease.
It is lead by Great Ormond Street Hospital and brings together data from Barts, London North West, Moorfields, RNOH, UCLH and the Royal Free.
They needed visibility and clarity on data across multiple projects and sites and a lack of visibility proved a huge obstacle and created inertia on a number of key projects.
The team needed to know the answers to various questions, such as how many people have or are suspected of having a particular disease and how many in particular regions have signs of the disease; where is this data stored?
However, lab tests are coded in multiple ways across North London – a single test such as albumin can be coded in over size ways i.e. ALB, CO310, 3398, A19 – making answering questions of the data complex and opaque.
Skilled researchers and clinicians, report that it takes between 5min and 4h to map a single code. However, there were 10 – 15k test codes per hospital which was proving a blocker on a multimillion pound project.