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Cohorting as a Service (CaaS)

Cohorting as a Service (CaaS) securely identifies groups of people with shared characteristics from national health data. 

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Our vision

Our vision is to enable population health interventions by delivering high quality, clinically assured cohorts to healthcare programmes, allowing them to make safe decisions, and take action more quickly.

About CaaS

CaaS is a secure and efficient service that supports healthcare programmes by: 

  • being able to create cohorts from various data sources 
  • meeting their direct care needs with an accurate patient view 

By working together, we can make sure appropriate care is provided to identified individuals as quickly as possible.  

In doing this we hope to achieve: 

  • higher participation rates in healthcare campaigns and interventions 
  • improved health outcomes and quality of life 

Definition of a cohort

A cohort is a group of individuals with shared characteristics, for example, age or location. When creating a cohort for direct care, healthcare programmes may also consider additional criteria for including or excluding individuals, for example:

  • medical coding that indicates pre-existing conditions 
  • medical coding that indicates treatment or healthcare procedures 

 These additional criteria help healthcare programmes better identify the individuals they need. 
 

How the service works

how the service works

What the image shows
  1. The healthcare programme asks about how to onboard and what funding and legal documentation is needed. 
  2. Once all required documentation is obtained by the requesting programme, they can onboard with CaaS. 
  3. Our clinical and onboarding teams work with the programme to identify possible data sources and understand any clinical risks within the data. 
  4. The programme provides the final cohort definition, and the Cohort Processing System (CPS) creates the cohort. 
  5. Once the cohort is built, the programme can securely access the cohort data and the documentation on how the cohort was created. 
  6. The programme can then use the data for direct care purposes and supporting activities as specified in their Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). 

Who the service is for

This service can be used by healthcare programmes that support direct care. 

Benefits

Why use Caas 
  • safe and secure access to data sources 
  • ability to produce multiple cohorts at the same time 
  • cost reduction through repeatable and scalable processes 
  • improved health outcomes for high-risk groups 
  • expert clinical safety knowledge and support 
  • aligns with the Information Security Management System Standard (ISO 27001) and the Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) developed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) 

Features

Clinical quality

CaaS maintains rigorous clinical standards. Through comprehensive, auditable processes, we ensure complete transparency in all clinical decisions, fostering trust and accountability.

Value for money

CaaS transforms complex policy and technical challenges into straightforward processes so that healthcare programmes can focus on providing direct care where it's needed most.

Smart, safe use of NHS data

Our clinical knowledge and data expertise enhances cohorting quality while minimising decision-making risks for programmes. Guided by information governance (IG) and clinical safeguards, CaaS ensures that appropriate NHS data is used.

Designed with NHS professionals in mind

Our service is:

  • user-friendly
  • accessible
  • fully aligned with NHS architecture and engineering standards

Successful cohort campaigns

CaaS has supported the NHS England vaccination programme to identify identified individuals for their campaigns. 

The campaigns we have supported are: 

Data sets we have used

When creating a cohort, data sets are used to identify specific groups of identified individuals based on their health information. This helps in evaluating health risks and improving their care.

The data sets that CaaS has previously used to support campaigns are: 

ARTICLE

Personal Demographics Service

The Personal Demographics Service (PDS) is the national master database of all NHS patients in England, Wales and the Isle of Man - holding basic patient details such as name, address, date of birth, contact details, registered GP, nominated pharmacy and NHS number. PDS has a National Back Office for handling data quality.
ARTICLE

General Practice Extraction Service (GPES)

We collect information from GPs across the UK for use in planning, research and generating payments.
ARTICLE

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) is a curated data product containing details about admissions, outpatient appointments and historical accident and emergency attendances at NHS hospitals in England.
ARTICLE

Clinical Classifications

OPCS-4 and ICD-10 are clinical classifications standards. Both are mandated nationally for use across the NHS and consist of groupings of concepts (codes), plus definitions and business rules for their use.
ARTICLE

The Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT)

The Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) data set collects systemic anti-cancer therapy activity from all NHS England providers.

Cohort Processing System (CPS)

CPS

The new national platform is helping to streamline healthcare data analysis

Find out more

Roadmap 

Future changes planned for CaaS 

National usage policy 

CaaS provides authorised NHS programmes access to identified individuals' information for improving direct care through cohorting.   

Organise an early engagement call with our team 

Complete the online enquiry form to schedule an early engagement call.

The information provided on the form will help the team understand your requirements and provide support throughout the onboarding process.

Senior Responsible Owner (SRO): Stephen Koch

Service owner: Joe Gamble

Category: Platforms

Service status: Alpha

Last edited: 27 February 2025 4:51 pm