Information management in the British national health service: The pragmatics of strategic data planning

The UK National Health Service (NHS) has been conducting an open exercise in global data modelling for the past 12 years and therefore constitutes a unique resource for the student of information management. This article aims to document some of the history of this exercise as well as placing this corporate data modelling within the social, political and economic context of the NHS, thereby explaining some of its current shape. Finally, using the case of the NHS we make some comments about the success, or otherwise, of conducting data modelling on the corporate scale.