Open-access prescription data can save NHS millions : Open Access Now

"A study funded by the National Health Services Commissioning Board (NHSCB) has found that the sharing of publicly available prescribing data could save millions of pounds a year for the NHS in England. The team of researchers from Mastodon C concentrated on statins, a class of drugs to lower cholesterol levels. The researchers analyzed the prescribing patterns of three types of prescribers over an eight week period to determine the amount of money that was spent in each area on statins.  Statins are the NHS’s second largest class of drugs by spending, and prescribers have five statins and one combination therapy to choose from. According to the estimates in the study, NHS had an average of  £27 million a month of 'potentially unnecessary' expenditure on two brand name statins. The initial analysis is available through Prescribing Analytics. 'In using open data to highlight trends, we see where we can do better and make improvements. Inefficiency in any system often results from poor or incomplete information about the overall picture. This is something that open data can address, as Prescribing Analytics so dramatically illustrates,' said Nigel Shadbolt, Chairman of The Open Data Institute. Read the full article here."