Hospital Treatment Insights Service

Hospital Treatment Insights Service (HTI)
IQVIA is currently working with a number of hospital trusts in England to collect information on illness and drug prescribing in hospitals. This data is used to describe how drugs are being used and to conduct studies to monitor the use, effectiveness and safety of drugs when treating diseases.

What information does IQVIA collect for HTI?
IQVIA does not hold any personally identifiable information on patients. All information collected from participating hospital trusts is first sent directly to NHS Digital, which is an executive non-departmental public body. Although this information includes a patient’s Name, Address, Post Code, NHS Number and Date of Birth, only the hospital Trust and NHS Digital hold these details. NHS Digital links the data to its Hospital Episode Statistics database, then removes all personal details before the data is sent to IQVIA.

IQVIA only has access to the information in non-identified form.

Who uses this HTI data?
The data is being used for medical research studies performed by academic researchers, pharmaceutical companies or medicines regulators among others. All studies have prior approval from an external scientific review committee before they are conducted and researchers must sign an agreement on using the data securely and how it can and cannot be used. This data is not used for conducting analysis for insurance companies, sales and marketing purposes or for understanding sales force performance - it is purely a medical research database.

HTI Security
IQVIA takes security of this data very seriously. The data is encrypted, stored securely and managed by ISO27001-certified processes. The security measures in place include access authentication, monitoring of access, round the clock security presence, robust firewalls, and other access restrictions. All of the work we do is subject to annual review and is auditable by the NHS.

HTI Legal Approval
In addition to ethics approval and NHS Digital approval, we have Section 251 of the NHS Act 2006 approval to permit the flow of confidential data from this Trust to NHS Digital for this purpose. This approval can be viewed online: see CAG advice and approval decisions with the reference 19/CAG/0117.

There is no obligation on hospitals or patients to provide this data for research. Patients have the right to opt-out of their data being used for research purposes. Patients also have the right to request the rectification or restriction of processing of their personal data held by the NHS or to object to the processing of such personal data, as well as the right to data portability. Patients would need to make their choice with the NHS to exercise these rights: https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/ or https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/manage-your-choice/.

HTI Privacy Notice

HTI Release Register

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