To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of standardising of NHS IT systems to help increase levels of efficiency.

Interoperability between IT systems would improve the quality of care and safety for patients, as well as enabling better informed clinical and care decision-making, by allowing for information to be shared easily, in real time, between organisations that use different systems.

Information standards relating to information technology would enable such interoperability. The Government will shortly commence section 95 of the Health and Care Act 2022 and introduce regulations, which will, with Parliament’s approval, set out the procedure for preparing and publishing mandatory information standards for public and private health and adult social care providers.

The Data (Use and Access) (DUA) Bill will, Parliament permitting, subsequently make standards mandatory for IT providers in the health and care system, and make provision for ensuring compliance.

The impact assessment for these measures in the DUA Bill estimates benefits in terms of efficiencies of over £100 million over ten years. This is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6719388b0d1a5bc610b778cd/data_use_and_access_bill_open_data_architecture_information_standards_impact_assessment.pdf