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Value

Health and care data has the potential to improve lives, support better services, and drive innovation. The TVS SDE is committed to making sure access to data delivers meaningful value for patients, the public, the NHS, and researchers. This may include improving patient outcomes, supporting NHS services, advancing research, developing new treatments, generating evidence for decision-making, and strengthening the quality of health and care data.

The SARC value criteria were co-designed with patients, the public, and health and care professionals through TVS coproduction and engagement activities.

The Data Access Request Form (DARF) collects the necessary evidence against these criteria to understand why the data is being requested and what difference the proposed work could make for patients, communities, services, staff, or wider society.

Requests are considered against their potential to deliver value for:

  • Patients, carers and families: whether the work could improve care, experience, treatment options, diagnosis, prevention, quality of life, safety or health outcomes.
  • Population health and communities: whether the work could improve understanding of illness, identify unmet need, reduce inequalities, support prevention, improve access to services, or support healthier lives for the general population or specific communities.
  • The health and care system: whether the work could improve quality, safety, efficiency, service planning, pathway design, standards of care, use of resources, or pressures on services.
  • Health and care staff: whether the work could support staff knowledge, skills, decision-making, experience, wellbeing, workload, recruitment, retention or workforce planning.
  • Wider society: whether the work could create economic value, support research and innovation, attract investment, strengthen public trust, inform policy, or create wider non-health value for local communities, such as in education, employment, crime reduction or community wellbeing.

Public value can be broad and flexible. It may be direct, indirect or long term. The value should be identifiable, even where it cannot be easily measured or quantified.