About the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network

Background

The Department of Health’s National End of Life Care Strategy, published in 2008, pledged to commission a National End of Life Care Intelligence Network (NEoLCIN).

The network is tasked with collating existing data and information on end of life care for adults in England. This is with the aim of helping the NHS and its partners commission and deliver high quality end of life care, in a way that makes the most efficient use of resources and responds to the wishes of dying people and their families.

The National End of Life Care Intelligence Network (NEoLCIN) will play a vital role in supporting the comprehensive implementation of the Government’s End of Life Care Strategy.

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Core objectives

The purpose of the NEoLCIN is to:

provide national coordination to bring together a national repository of diverse sources of data related to end of life care which will enable people to create intelligence from data and thereby improve quality and productivity;
utilise and disseminate existing data sources more effectively for local service planning and driving improvement in standards of end of life care;
generate and utilise information on the financial aspects – costs and savings compared to alternative models of end of life care;
generate ideas and solutions in relation to ongoing information requirements, e.g. end of life care minimum data set;
commission and manage new information/data analysis work according to priorities identified in the National End of Life Care Strategy;
bring together a variety of people including data holders/owners of information, clinicians and key users of this data intelligence to explore better use of data for commissioning, service delivery, research and audit;
suggest modifications to existing datasets;
promote efficient and effective data collection throughout the end of life care pathway;
produce, promote and present expert analysis and robust methodologies for analysing data in end of life care;
present and disseminate information in a clear and timely fashion;
enable use of end of life care information to support audit and research programmes.

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Structure and governance

NEoLCIN Structure chart

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Partners

The NEoLCIN aims to work with a wide range of partners with an interest in improving end of life care. These include:

Department of Health

The NEoLCIN was commissioned by the Department of Health and is supported by the National End of Life Care Programme.

National Cancer Intelligence Network

The NCIN has provided the model on which the NEoLCIN is based. The two Networks will sit alongside each other and will collaborate on projects in the future. Cancer is the second biggest cause of death in men (after cardiovascular disease) and the third biggest cause of death in women, so sharing information across these two networks will be valuable.

South West Public Health Observatory

The SWPHO is the national lead public health observatory for end of life care and is part of a network of public health observatories working across the five nations of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is also part of the National Cancer Intelligence Network and a member of the UK Association of Cancer Registries. It was commissioned to develop this website, and to produce the End of Life Care Profiles and a series of analytical reports to support the delivery of NEoLCIN core objectives.

Further details about Network partners will be added soon.

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