Move backed by transport and health departments
Cross-department data sharing to help improve road safety has moved a step closer after senior officials agreed to back a pilot programme.
In a joint statement released today, Lucy Vickers, Chief Data Officer at the Department for Health and Social Care, Ed Humpherson, Director General at the Office for Statistics Regulation, and Professor Sarah Sharples, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Transport, said they see a “way forward building on the Pre-hospital Research and Audit Network (PRANA) project to create a single, rigorously implemented, and properly governed linked dataset to serve as the new standard product, moving us beyond siloed statistics whilst maintaining adherence to the highest standards of data security, governance, and accountability.”
The statement follows a meeting convened by the RAC Foundation earlier this year to see how recommendations made in a 2024 report by Seema Yalamanchili of Imperial College London could best be implemented.
According to the statement, “in 2023 alone, 1,624 people lost their lives on the roads in Great Britain, with many thousands more suffering serious, life-altering injuries. Despite significant efforts, these figures have shown little improvement in over a decade – reflecting not only personal tragedy on a vast scale, but also a substantial and ongoing economic cost to society.
The signatories go on:
“That is why, we are convinced that action is needed now from decision-makers across health, transport, and data governance to work collaboratively, prioritise data integration, and ensure that road safety benefits from the same evidence-based approach that has improved outcomes in other sectors.
“We sense strong momentum across government, academia, and industry to overcome the barriers.”
The benefits of increased data sharing could include:
- Completeness – moderate to slight injuries less likely to be captured in STATS-19 [the current reporting crash and casualty reporting system] but are available within national health datasets provided they have sought medical attention from the NHS. Other important under-reported groups such as pedestrians and cyclists are also likely to be better captured.
- Accuracy – using confirmed clinical codes for injury outcomes and interventions provides a true assessment of injury severity which is important for comprehensive appreciation of the health and economic impact of road collisions.
- Better statistical reporting – correct clinical coding permits reliable comparisons across time periods and geographical regions as well as evaluation of interventions.
- Contemporary analysis–developments in machine learning techniques allow greater mining for patterns and causal relationships in large datasets but is limited by the quality of the underlying data. Improved accuracy and completeness would enhance the utility of machine learning, for example roadside risk
scoring to improve triage protocols to alert emergency services. - Access for non-health researchers – complexities in applying for health data have prevented many road safety researchers from undertaking analysis involving injury outcomes, limiting potential for timely assessment and interventions of locally observed road safety issues.
Central to any sharing will be a robust system of data protection which ensures work respects ethical and legal issues associated with privacy.
ENDS