Digital Health and Care Wales

Supplier information

Digital Health and Care Wales develop the digital services needed to transform health and care delivery in Wales. They are part of NHS Wales and were previously known as NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS).

Legal basis for sharing data

The legal basis for sharing these data is Section 45a/c of the Statistics and Registration Service Act (SRSA) 2007 as amended by the Digital Economy Act 2017.

Ethical scrutiny

ONS statisticians complete an ethical assessment of all proposed uses of a data source before work begins, and before they are given permission to access the data by the ONS Information Asset Owners (IAO). IAOs are senior ONS officials who are responsible for data sources, including protecting confidentiality and ensuring appropriate use.

For some new uses, notably where there may be more challenging ethical concerns, ONS statisticians will seek advice and ethical approval from the National Statistician’s Data Ethics Advisory Committee (NSDEC). Committee members have relevant expertise, provide scrutiny and challenge, and crucially, are independent.

Ethical scrutiny often involves exploring the balance between any data protection risks and the public good that could come from the new work. Most importantly, this scrutiny helps the ONS to ensure that we consider carefully whether we should produce a new statistic or not.

Minutes are published so the committee's views and approvals are transparent and available for the public to see. More information on the ethics self-assessment tool used by ONS researchers, and the NSDEC, can be found on the UK Statistics Authority's website.

Links to relevant NSDEC minutes are included for each dataset.

Data protection

Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) are completed for all uses of data where there are inherent risks for processing personal data, for example, when processing large volumes of personal data or when processing personal data of a sensitive nature. The DPIA ensures appropriate controls are in place to minimise risks and to provide assurance around the safety of the data.

Access to data held within the ONS Data Access Platform (DAP) is only granted to security-cleared ONS researchers on a case-by-case basis. This is done through a request process, which provides a business justification, authorised by the ONS IAO with advice from the Security and Information Management team.

Access is given via a “project space”, which includes only the data required to carry out the analysis that has been approved, and only to the users who require access to those data. Users are not permitted to access direct identifiers (such as name, address, date of birth, or sex) for the purposes of analysis. Access to identifiers is limited to a smaller number of staff who are specially trained and only for the purposes of data linkage. These staff are not involved in analysis or statistical production so there is a separation of duties between data linkers and data analysts.

The COVID-19 Vaccinations Data (Wales) contain records of COVID-19 vaccinations given to people in Wales.

Uses

These data are used alongside comparable data from England to analyse the UK's vaccination campaign, which is an integral part of understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. This use of the data enhances our production of more timely, high-quality, and geographically inclusive statistics.

We are working to link Welsh vaccine data to COVID-19 Infection Survey data so that we can produce statistics for Wales that we have previously only been able to produce for England.

Additional information about ethical scrutiny

The relevant National Statistician's Data Ethics Advisory Committee (NSDEC) minutes for uses of this dataset are the NSDEC minutes for March 2022.

Data minimisation

Only fields that have been deemed necessary for the purposes outlined within the data sharing agreement (DSA) have been requested. The data specification replicates the equivalent corresponding English datasets already acquired. This allows for comparability and coherence in England and Wales analysis.

Links for further information

There is more information about COVID-19 Vaccination Data for Wales on the GOV.WALES website.

The Emergency Department Data Set (EDDS) (Wales) attempts to capture all activity at Emergency Departments and Minor Injury Units in NHS Wales hospitals. Data are collected and coded at each hospital, before being electronically transferred to NHS Wales.

Uses

This dataset is used alongside the Emergency Care Dataset (ECDS) for England to produce high-quality statistics on the health interactions of people in England and Wales. We combine these data with the comparable data from England. This means our analysis of interactions with health services is more inclusive as it covers a larger geographic area.

The EDDS is used to understand the interactions of people in Wales with Emergency Department care. This is of particular importance for COVID-19 research but can also be used for a range of official statistics for Wales, in line with those we can produce for England using the ECDS.

These data are also used as part of investigations into the production of administrative-based ethnicity statistics; these can be compared with Census 2021-based ethnicity estimates to assess the suitability of using admin data for producing ethnicity estimates in non-census years.

Data minimisation

Only fields that have been deemed necessary for the purposes outlined within the data sharing agreement (DSA) have been requested. The data specification replicates the equivalent corresponding English datasets already acquired. This allows for comparability and coherence in England and Wales analysis.

Additional information about data protection

Information may only be disclosed if the ONS is satisfied that the information is required for the purposes of the statistical functions of the devolved authority and that it will not be used for any other purpose. This must be with explicit consent from Digital Health and Care Wales for the disclosure of the information. Any approved release will have an accompanying data sharing agreement, outlining the conditions to be met.

Once we no longer need to hold the data to fulfil our statutory functions, the data held by the ONS under this arrangement will be destroyed in line with HM Government’s Security Policy Framework and with relevant data protection legislation.

Further information

Find information about the Emergency Department Data Set (EDDS) Wales data consistency standards (PDF, 192 KB) on the Digital Health and Care Wales website.

Find information about the Emergency Department Data Set (EDDS) Wales data validity standards on the Digital Health and Care Wales website.

This includes all inpatient and day-case hospital interactions recorded by NHS Wales. These data are the Welsh counterpart to NHS England’s Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) for England.

Uses

This dataset is used alongside English HES data to produce high-quality statistics on the health interactions of people in England and Wales. Combining these data with the comparable data from England allows for the production of more geographically inclusive health interaction analysis.

The PEDW is used to understand the interactions of people in Wales with NHS sites that provide inpatient and day-case care. This is particularly important for coronavirus (COVID-19) research but can also be used for a range of official statistics for Wales, in line with those we can produce for England using the HES data.

Additional information about ethical scrutiny

The relevant NSDEC minutes for uses of this dataset are the NSDEC minutes for September 2021.

Data minimisation

Only fields that have been deemed necessary for the purposes outlined within the data sharing agreement have been requested. The specification for the data replicates the corresponding English datasets. This allows for comparability and coherence in England and Wales analysis.

Further information

There is more information about the PEDW on Digital Health and Care Wales' website.