The NHS Data Transformation: The Future of Cancer Care is Already Here

Next-generation innovations in data are beginning to take cancer care into a new phase. Across England, hospitals are using shared digital platforms to manage diagnosis and treatment as they happen, marking a significant shift in how the NHS delivers care.

At the centre of this change is the Federated Data Platform (FDP), the national data infrastructure led by Ming Tang, the NHSE’s Chief Digital and Information Officer, and Ayub Bhayat, Director of Data Services and Deputy Chief Data and Analytics Officer. The FDP connects existing clinical and operational systems across trusts, allowing teams to view and act on shared information securely. Its gives hospitals a live picture of their activity and helping them make decisions based on current data rather than retrospective reports.

Early evidence from cancer services suggests that this approach is beginning to change outcomes: improving coordination, reducing delays and giving clinicians the visibility they need to manage care in real time.

A New Digital Cancer Care Architecture for Trusts 

One of the first practical applications of the FDP is Cancer 360, a platform designed to manage cancer pathways from referral through to diagnosis and treatment. It consolidates data from multiple hospital systems into a single, secure dashboard, enabling clinicians to see where patients are in their journey, which tests are pending and where potential delays might occur.

At Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, improvement has been measurable. The proportion of patients receiving a diagnosis within 28 days rose from 71.5 per cent to 84.7 per cent, while urgent suspected cancer referrals increased from 2,343 to 2,480. Since launch, the platform has supported more than 52,000 patients, across 46 cancer teams and 239 active users.

Following Chelsea and Westminster’s results, other hospitals have begun adopting the same model to tackle local backlogs and coordination challenges.

At Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, the platform was launched across colorectal and upper-gastrointestinal cancer pathways. The Bath team has focused on improving visibility across diagnostic services, where the lack of central oversight has caused delays between referrals, endoscopy and follow-up imaging. Early feedback shows reduced the time taken to verify diagnostic results and escalate cases that risk breaching waiting-time targets.

The University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust is deploying the same platform. The pilot is targeting high-volume tumour sites, such as lung and colorectal, where bottlenecks are most acute. Derby’s programme is designed to test how the FDP can help teams identify patients stuck in the diagnostic stage and redeploy capacity before backlogs build up.

Tackling the Cancer Backlog with Data

These innovations cannot come soon enough. It has been reported that almost every hospital trust in England is now missing the 62-day cancer treatment target, with only a handful meeting national standards. 

Research led by Dr Timothy Hanna, a global authority on cancer treatment, found that every four-week delay in therapy reduces a patient’s chance of survival by around 10 per cent. “It’s not a few outliers,” he said. “It’s the norm for trusts in England not to hit these waiting-time targets, and they are set for a reason. Timely treatment can improve survival rates.”

Cancer Research UK estimates that diagnostic and treatment delays cost the UK economy £10.3 billion a year in lost productivity. For clinicians, the problem is not only capacity but visibility: data sits in separate systems, updates arrive too late, and teams struggle to see where patients are waiting in real time.

From Data to Intelligence: Towards a Connected Health Service

For Ming Tang and her team, this marks a fundamental shift in how the NHS uses information. The FDP allows each trust to retain ownership of its data while connecting securely to others, creating a shared but decentralised model of governance. This structure not only improves operational performance but lays the foundation for predictive analytics and real-time planning across the system.

The pilots in Chelsea, Bath and Derby illustrate how this new model works in practice. Each site has used the same data backbone to design a tool that fits its needs, whether that means speeding up diagnostic verification, coordinating multidisciplinary teams or identifying patients most at risk of delay. 

In a system where only a handful of trusts are meeting cancer targets, the early success of Cancer 360 offers a glimpse of what a data-driven health service might look like: one that sees its own performance and acts on necessary input in real time.