The organisation was an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care.

This includes national comparative data for secondary uses, developed from the long-running Hospital Episode Statistics which can help local decision makers to improve the quality and efficiency of frontline care.

[6][2] NHSX, created in February 2019, has oversight of digital strategy and policy in NHS England.

[3] This enables a number of services for patients, including: As the HSCIC, the organisation ran the care.data programme, which was cancelled in 2016.

NHS Digital collected the national 'Hospital Episode Statistics' (HES), which is a record of every 'episode' of admitted patient care (counted by completing care with a consultant, meaning that more than one episode can be associated with a single stay in hospital[14]) delivered by the NHS in England, including those done under contract by private providers.

[17] In August 2020 it launched a pilot electronic prescription service in three hospital trusts, where hospital prescriptions were sent electronically to the patient’s community pharmacy, as during the COVID-19 pandemic in England most outpatient consultations were held remotely.

Eight trusts needed emergency assistance in 2018 after a deployment led to severe service disruptions.