London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

A new hi-tech internet health site has been launched that could help save lives across the country.

The internet version of a specialised NHS website will open up a wealth of information on health to organisations which previously had no access to its huge reservoir of statistics and supporting information.

Now research institutions, universities, government departments and local authorities will be able to use the website to spot potential health problems faster and learn from different approaches across England.

The new service was commissioned by the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and is run by the National Centre for Health Outcomes Development (NCHOD), a joint venture by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Oxford University.

NCHOD director Dr Azim Lakhani explained that the website had been restricted to NHS users only due to the risks surrounding the identification of individual patients, even indirectly, especially when information concerned a very small number of patients or a specific locality.

But Dr Lakhani said the new version of the Clinical and Health Outcomes Knowledge Base removed that risk by restricting some of the data.

Dr Lakhani added: "What we are now able to do on a much wider scale is show people where there might be a problem, allowing them to target resources effectively.

"For example, a local authority may have a health problem in a deprived population. It can now look at results for another area with a similar profile where health is better.

"From that, they may judge whether it's perhaps not just deprivation but some other factor which may be responsible for the health problem and they can use that information to improve health care."

HSCIC director of customer and stakeholder management Dr John Fox said: "This is a major step forward in making information more accessible to the public, regulators, health and social care professionals and policy makers, leading to improvements in knowledge and efficiency."

The database contains more than 500 indicators on health and health risks, including cancer, heart disease and infectious diseases gathered from around 700 NHS trusts and health authorities. It also contains advice on how to measure health and the impact of health care - including information from the point of view of patients.

Dr Lakhani added: "Our ultimate aim is for this information to be used to save lives and improve health across the country.

"It's only when problems are highlighted that something can be done about them - sometimes specific areas don't even know there is a problem, but we can help them identify particular issues."