NHSBSA Data Hub Alpha Assessment

From: DHSCAssessment date: 16/07/2026Type: Alpha AssessmentResult: GreenService provider: NHSBSA

Service description 

Through the services it delivers the NHSBSA generates a wealth of valuable data which is used to shape operational delivery, inform policy and provide public value.

People currently navigate multiple separate systems, with inconsistent experiences, to achieve these goals. This service is being designed to meet user needs, with a consistent user experience and a modular, technology-agnostic architecture to support future needs.

The NHSBSA Data Hub will give users a single place to discover, understand and access NHSBSA data products and services. The MVP has a narrower scope focus on data domains for prescribing and dispensing, ophthalmic and dental data.

Service users 

Primary users — those who are intended to use the service:

Pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and medicines optimisation teams (ePACT2) Dental commissioners, dental providers and practice managers (eDEN Ophthalmic clinical advisors and commissioners (eOPS) ICBs (Integrated Care Boards) and primary care organisations NHS trusts and independent sector healthcare providers NHSBSA internal analysts and data teams Welsh dental providers and local health boards

Secondary users — those who assist primary users:

Data Services Support Team Training and Engagement Team

Tertiary users — those indirectly involved:

DHSC policy makers and analysts Parliament (Parliamentary Questions) Report contents Understand users and their needs Solve a whole problem for users Provide a joined-up experience across all channels Make the service simple to use Make sure everyone can use the service Have a multidisciplinary team Use agile ways of working Iterate and improve frequently Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy Define what success looks like and publish performance data Choose the right tools and technology Make new source code open Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns Operate a reliable service 1. Understand users and their needs 

Decision: The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

Build a beta research roadmap around riskiest assumptions: The team has not yet explored user needs around data literacy, confidence, task type or interpretation user needs; describing mainly pain points. The current research has also focused on users via role, job title or data domain. This is a significant user research gap because it could affect the design e.g., navigation, language, content, guidance, personalisation, accessibility and meeting cross segment user needs. Research user by data literacy, confidence and task type: Beta research should deliberately recruit across a spectrum of data literacy and data confidence, rather than relying mainly on role, job title or data domain (as described in the personas). Research should explore how these users define their own data confidence, what they need to trust the data, where they make interpretation errors, and what level of guidance is useful without becoming overwhelming. Compare alternative ways of meeting different user needs: In Beta, the research may want to consider comparing alternative ways of meeting a wide range of user needs. Beta could compare different support and presentation options rather than assuming one route will work for all users. Measure success outcomes and not only satisfaction or usage: The research should continue to use CSAT, EASE and SUS, but these could be enhanced by using other research-based success measures e.g., task completion, reduced support demand, successful onboarding, use of contextual guidance, and whether users can complete tasks without relying on intermediaries etc. Consider conducting research methodologies that provide a broader view of data usage to extract user needs e.g., diary studies or contextual interviews to understand why users need the data (triggers) and how users apply the data outputs in their working environment (end goals). Maintain a clear evidence trail from research to decisions: The team should be able to present a design log or research repository that shows how research findings lead to user needs, design hypotheses, backlog items, design changes and measured outcomes, considered trade-offs, how accessibility was assessed etc. This may be particularly important for future design decisions about Power BI, new-tab behaviour, personalisation, contextual guidance and support content. 2. Solve a whole problem for users

Decision: The service was rated green for point 2 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

The defined service boundary does not entirely match the intended outcome. Information shared before the assessment excluded the work through which users interpret the data and achieve their purpose. In the next phase of work, include a clear journey that shows how users move from initial need through to interpretation and task completion. Ensure that work on the non-digital aspects of the service remain a priority. The team have done well to identify a variety of usage scenarios and must make sure they are designed for and maintained. As you move into private beta, make sure opportunities and challenges to improve the service across all channels are surfaced and prioritised. Be careful not to overdetermine how the service boundaries are drawn by writing solutions into your user need statements. From a research perspective, team did not fully demonstrate the whole problem users are trying to solve. The discussion included useful examples of users finding reports, opening dashboards etc. but the wider end-to-end journey is still underdeveloped. The panel decided to mark this green in the anticipation that the service team would use private Beta to fully evidence how end-to-end service is used to solve a whole problem for the users: failure to do so would risk delays in proceeding to public Beta. 3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels

Decision: The service was rated green for point 3 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

There is a notable absence of user journey documentation extending before and beyond the interface. While the team have done well to engage with support and training teams, excluding this aspect of the user experience leaves a gap in their ability to reason about alternate ways to solve for user needs. In private beta, develop this view and use it to shape prioritisation of future work. Continue to work with the training and support teams to shape the wider service offering, which includes the digital service you are developing, along with support materials and processes, user adoption, how users find out about the service, feedback, and offboarding. Use what you are learning about how users engage with the digital service to shape the training approach. Make sure you can measure the effectiveness of support and contextual materials so you can determine whether they are worth maintaining. This should be based on analytics and observation of how users engage with the material. Investigate how to make the service easier to find through SEO. Report your findings and subsequent decisions and changes when coming to the next assessment. 4. Make the service simple to use

Decision: The service was rated green for point 4 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

Continue work on the content design, including naming, labelling, and taxonomies, to support your user needs. Pay careful attention to consistency across aspects of the service and using plain language while still respecting specialist user knowledge. Ensure user needs are agnostic of a solution. Determine how to align your naming strategy to the wider public sector approaches regarding the use of “hub” vs “library”. Generate alternate names for the service and test them with users. The team has tested parts of the prototype and received positive feedback, especially compared with the current Oracle service. However, the evidence presented appears stronger on findability and preference than on successful completion of realistic tasks. For example, users liked opening dashboards in a new tab and having methodology or data dictionary content nearby, but there is less evidence that these design choices helped users to complete tasks accurately and confidently. 5. Make sure everyone can use the service

Decision: The service was rated green for point 5 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

The team has done more on accessibility than many alpha teams, and this highly commendable. They have involved accessibility specialists, considered Power BI constraints, discussed new-tab behaviour and agree to continue to do so, and confirmed that an accessibility statement exists. For beta, the team could map out user journeys linked to risks and assumptions and user needs. This should include journeys for secondary and tertiary users, cross-domain users, users with different data literacy levels, users with access needs, and users who rely on others to extract data for them. 6. Have a multidisciplinary team

Decision: The service was rated green for point 6 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

For your next assessment, define explicitly the team that will be working not just on the next phase of the project but how it would change as you add more products and continue to iterate. The team must be able to respond quickly to learning, so next time, explain visually the team’s authority across the systems and organisations on different user journeys depend. 7. Use agile ways of working

Decision: The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

The team described ceremonies and some stakeholder engagement but said little about governance, delegated authority, funding and approval constraints, escalation, or how senior stakeholders make decisions without fixing scope prematurely. Before moving to Public Beta, include this important information into your submission. 8. Iterate and improve frequently

Decision: The service was rated green for point 8 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

The team has iterated frequently during Alpha and shared plans to use user research, phase-banner feedback, quarterly surveys, user forums, analytics and support data during Private Beta. Before going to next assessment, bring together evidence and share some concrete and specific examples for: How did you analyse feedback What did you learn? What did you do as a result to address a specific issue? What happened after? The team needs to collate evidence of identifying, testing and learning from riskiest assumptions that would constitute scope of the private Beta. The team would benefit from recording and showing before-and-after examples of design changes, the research finding/s that triggered each change, and whether subsequent testing showed improvement in further Beta assessments. 9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy

Decision: The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

The team has established a layered security architecture across the AWS/Azure boundary, this can be robust, but only if there is a clearly defined single source of truth for entitlements. Otherwise, permissions may drift between AWS resource policies, Data Hub roles, Entra groups, Fabric workspaces, Power BI app/report permissions and RLS role mappings. Before the next assessment the team should provide a clear security architecture for the system which addresses these points. The team provided a Data Hub data flow mapping, but this did not show the detailed flow of personal data collected about users by the data hub and how this is separated from the anonymised analytical data in the Fabric workspace. The team should provide this for their next assessment. The team provided a provisional ITHC/PenTest report, which highlighted a number of low severity issues and one access control issue that was pending confirmation, these should be addressed before the next assessment, and a plan put in place for regular ITHC/PenTest and remediation. Additionally, the team should consider threat modelling their architecture to expose any possible security concerns before their next assessment. The team may find the following guidance useful when considering how to protect users’ privacy: GDS principles for securing personal data in government services and NCSC guidance on protecting sensitive personal information. 10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data

Decision: The service was rated green for point 10 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

Before your next assessment consider bringing together examples and evidence of work the work that shows how you combined analysis of data from surveys, research, user forums, support data, analytics and technical monitoring, and used insights to further drive service improvement or inform the next iteration. The service aims to improve data interpretation and task completion (reference to hypothesis and the vision), but the proposed measures (key performance indicators) focus mainly on satisfaction, usability, usage and support demand. These do not establish whether users select the correct data, interpret it accurately or complete their underlying task. Consider how to better link genuine measures of the overall end-to-end service to demonstrate its initial intent, and user-and-business value. The team uses CSAT, EAST and SAS on the current service and has collected SAS during usability testing. This is useful, but from a user research perspective these success measures are limited in demonstrating the meeting of user needs. The team needs measures that go beyond satisfaction, usability scores and usage volumes. For example, users can complete real tasks accurately, whether they select the right data, whether the design assists in data interpretation, whether contextual guidance helps, whether support demand decreases, that users with lower data confidence can complete tasks, and if hidden demand is reduced because users no longer need intermediaries to extract data for them. 11. Choose the right tools and technology

Decision: The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

The team has chosen to reuse established NHS BSA patterns and services (e.g. AWS resources for the Data Hub, Entra for IAM, Fabric/Power BI for the visualisation/reporting) before their next assessment they should more clearly show how these choices are the best ones and what the trade-offs and costs were with choosing a multi-cloud architecture. 12. Make new source code open

Decision: The service was rated green for point 12 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

The team have successfully opened their alpha prototype source code in a GitHub repository (https://github.com/nhsbsa/data-hub), before their next assessment they should plan how they will develop their private beta of the Data Hub in the open from the start. 13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns

Decision: The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

After alpha, continue to explore how to make use of and extend the design system to suit your user needs related to multi-modal working. Engage with the wider NHS and gov design community, especially the admin systems group, on how you might find new ways to improve data usage and comprehension. The team has set out a comprehensive API layer for the Data Hub, before the next assessment they should explore options for exposing this for external integration and reuse as well as ensuring they are following Government API standards. 14. Operate a reliable service

Decision The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.

Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

Before the next assessment the team should plan how they will support and monitor the Data Hub on-going, in light of their plans to include other data products and the need to support greater numbers of users.

https://digitalhealth.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/31/nhsbsa-data-hub-alpha-assessment/

seen at 15:45, 31 July in Digital health and social care.