Whole-system insights & open data
A five-minute orientation to this part of PCND — the Neighbourhood Profile, the Insights dashboards and the Data Library — including who it's for and, just as importantly, what the figures can and can't tell you.
What this is
The whole-system insights and open-data area brings together publicly available NHS and government data about general practice and the communities it serves. It takes figures that are normally scattered across dozens of separate publications and spreadsheets and presents them as joined-up, self-service views for a chosen area — a practice, a Primary Care Network (PCN), a neighbourhood, a borough or wider. Everything here is built from open data; it contains no patient-identifiable information.
This orientation covers the open-data side only. The contracted-service dashboards and the calculators and tools are separate areas of the site with their own purpose.
Who it's for
It started as a tool for primary care, and it is now built for the wider neighbourhood too:
- Primary care — PCNs and practices looking at activity, workforce and the health of the population they serve.
- Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs)— a shared, single view of what's happening across a neighbourhood's health and care.
- Voluntary & community sector (VCS) — understanding local need and where community support can make the biggest difference.
- Councils & public health — linking clinical activity to the wider determinants of health such as deprivation, income and housing.
- Residents & anyone interested— a transparent picture of their area's services.
What's in this section
Neighbourhood Profile
A guided tour of one area across ten themes — access, prevention, the team, community, digital, population and more. The best place to start if you want the overall story of a neighbourhood.
Open the profile →Insights dashboards
Focused dashboards that pull all the relevant data together around one topic at a time — getting an appointment, long-term conditions, medicines, urgent care, workforce and the wider determinants of health.
Browse Insights →Data Library
The source-of-truth catalogue of every dataset behind this area — what it is, how current it is, exactly what level of detail (grain) it's published at, and a link to the official publisher. Go here if you want to know where a number comes from.
Explore the datasets →What you can — and can't — use it for
This data is designed to be honest about its limits. Three things are worth understanding before you draw conclusions:
Grain — the level of detail
Different datasets are published at different levels. Some go right down to an individual practice; others only exist for a whole ICB, region or England. The site always shows a figure at its true grain and never pretends a national number is a local one. Where a dataset is only published for a wider area, a local scope is shown at its nearest parent level, clearly labelled.
Denominators — what a rate is measured against
Most rates are "per registered patient" (for example, per 1,000 patients). The registered list is who is signed up with local practices, which is not the same as who lives in the area (the resident population). In some neighbourhoods these differ a lot, so compare like with like.
Data currency — how up to date it is
NHS data updates at different speeds — monthly, quarterly or yearly. The "latest" figure can still be several months old, and each explorer and the Data Library show the exact period the figures cover. Some figures (expected prevalence, small-area income, fuel poverty) are modelled estimates — good for spotting high and low areas and general trends, not precise point figures.
Where to find what
- Want the overall story of an area? → Neighbourhood Profile
- Want to dig into one topic (access, medicines, workforce…)? → Insights
- Want to know where a number comes from or how fresh it is? → Data Library
- Confused by a term or acronym? → Glossary