Health sector to benefit from upgraded ICS-level data

We’ve been commissioned by NHS England to develop data mapping and analysis tool SHAPE to hold even more comprehensive information about the country’s healthcare estate.

SHAPE already includes over 100 national data sets to support place based decision making, including population demographics and projections, NHS organisations, comprehensive primary care estate information and travel time analysis.

Following the successful delivery of the Primary Care Data Gathering exercise and the PCN Toolkit programme which provided a consistent framework for primary care estates planning, the team will be expanding the data SHAPE holds, adding acute, mental health and community premises and occupier information to the platform.

A system briefing from NHS England said that the project “enables a holistic approach by providing information on demographic, clinical and estate detail across an area, aiding in updating future iterations of infrastructure strategies.”

The upgrade to SHAPE will also ensure data insights can be applied to support local, place, system and national level decision making by illustrating real-life, evidence-based strategies. The project will also support the establishment of an appropriate investment and disinvestment pipeline based on estate opportunities and population need.

The enhanced ICS-level information is expected to be available in SHAPE from early November 2024.

Claire Harrison, Chief Executive of Parallel, who develop SHAPE, said: “This is a really exciting project to work on, and we’re looking forward to being able to offer even more data for users of SHAPE. In the interim, there’s already an extensive set of datasets within SHAPE that can support you with infrastructure strategies and estates plans, and we’ll be running free training sessions for ICS users to advise them how to use SHAPE to help with their ICS infrastructure strategy.”

SHAPE is an online, interactive data mapping, analysis and insight tool that supports service planning and estates strategy development, which is supported by the Department of Health and Social Care and is free to use for the public sector. Used by tens of thousands of people across the NHS, SHAPE is a web-enabled application that facilitates scenario planning and options appraisals to help make evidence-based decisions.

Recent projects SHAPE has supported include everything from enabling NHS England to locate their vaccination hubs, community diagnostic centres and screening facilities in the most appropriate locations, to helping a local authority with social care capacity planning.

If you work in the public sector, register for SHAPE Place for free now, or explore ways in which other public sector organisations have used SHAPE to enhance their decision-making.

You can also sign up to free ICS infrastructure strategy training sessions on the SHAPE website.