National HEALTHSPAN® Data for NHS England

OBH provide the data and measure HEALTHSPAN for the population of England and NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). OBH and the NHS England PaPI team delivered the first ever national pilot figures of HEALTHSPAN for England in 2019.

HEALTHSPAN DEEP DIVE

Population-level HEALTHSPAN® is an objective measure of the amount of time individuals spend in good health, usually described as a proportion of their overall lifespan. It measures when people develop their first significant long term condition, and the average age at which this occurs within a population.

In May 2024, OBH presented on national HEALTHSPAN in England as part of the FutureNHS AnalystX Huddle series. This session provided a deep dive into the development of national HEALTHSPAN. It also explores the some of the findings and benefits of using HEALTHSPAN for population health management.

HEALTHSPAN CALIBRATION AGAINST OTHER NATIONAL MEASURES

This report provides a comparison of national HEALTHSPAN against other publicly available measures of time spent in good health, such as Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) and Disability-Free Life Expectancy (DFLE). Using HEALTHSPAN, in combination alongside HLE and DFLE, may be of benefit to comprehensively understand different perspectives on a population’s overall ‘health state’. This report also compares how close the HEALTHSPAN figure based on the National Bridges to Health Segmentation Dataset is to a HEALTHSPAN figure based on a local Segmentation Dataset, which includes data from all local GP practices, as well as SUS data, for a single ICB. Insights from HEALTHSPAN analytics can also be found in the report, including an exploration of the social gradient and inequalities in HEALTHSPAN nationally.

Download the HEALTHSPAN Calibration Report

HEALTHSPAN DATA FOR NHS ENGLAND

OBH maintain and release the data for national and ICB-level HEALTHSPAN for NHS England. The data is provided for NHS analysts to use in programmes, and feed dashboards such as NHSE’s Population and Person Insight (PaPI) Dashboard.

Using routinely collected, linked longitudinal health and care data, HEALTHSPAN measures the age at which people develop their first significant long term health condition. From a data perspective, this is calculated by looking at the average age when people develop their first significant long term health condition and ‘enter’ any of the higher acuity segments (in the National Bridges to Health Segmentation Dataset).

Developed by OBH to provide a novel and unique way of measuring the health of a population, this work has been translated into centrally-held datasets and is now produced nationally, available to NHS analysts to use in programmes, and visualised in NHSE’s Population and Person Insight (PaPI) Dashboard.

Learn more on the PaPI website

THE HEALTH OF THE NATION REPORT

In February 2020, OBH contributed to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity’s report: ‘The Health of the Nation – A National Strategy for Healthier Longer Lives’, which sets out a strategy in order to meet the government’s mission of five extra healthy years by 2035, ensuring a renewed focus on the prevention of ill-health.

A commentary recently published in The Lancet describes this report, including OBH’s related analysis using HealthSpan®.