Combined Intelligence For Public Health Action (CIPHA) programme progresses to second phase

Significant progress has been made to ensure that Cheshire and Merseyside’s Combined Intelligence for Public Health Action (CIPHA) dashboard is operational before the winter period.

The data and intelligence dashboard, which was commissioned by the Hospital and Out of Hospital Cells and funded by NHSX, will provide an integrated and shared intelligence base to support partners across the region when managing COVID-19 outbreaks.

The dashboard will monitor the incidences of cases and mortalities in near real time across acute, community mental health and local authority services whilst also monitoring and reporting on the capacity in the system to handle the demand of a second surge, should one occur.

It will be an important element of managing outbreaks in the region and will support both cells, Public Health England, Local Authorities, the NHS and CCGs to manage the response on a strategic level.

The main sources of data that inform this dashboard include all providers in Cheshire and Merseyside, national data sources and testing centres in the region.

Over the past few months, the project has met many milestones, including:

• Established governance, with the creation of a Board, programme team and workstream leads
• Enacted a detailed five-week delivery plan, with the first phase of this now complete
• Engaged with partners through various workshops and meetings (eg. (COVID-cells, clinical informatics Group, GPs, NWAS, NHS Provider Trusts, LMCs, digital leadership community, Local Authorities, Public Health, labs and NPEX, IG groups and leads and The University of Liverpool)
• Developed a target operating model – including initial use cases covering epidemiology and capacity and demand planning
• A robust data sharing agreement in place (with contributions from stakeholders) with most of the main providers signed up and nearly half the GPs.

Having established the platform and initial outputs the programme is now moving into the second phase. During the next phase, the programme will prioritise on creating a clinical outcomes radar, integration with public health reporting and a renewed focus on reporting of vaccinations.

Further updates about the progress of this project will be shared in upcoming editions of Connect, the Partnership’s stakeholder newsletter.