NHS Digital has inked a deal with DXC Technology and CSIRO to improve clinical and administrative code mapping between different health and care organisations and their contracted technology suppliers.

The deal provides a single-supplier procurement framework, which is set to give health and care organisations across the UK an easier route to procure a terminology server.

In turn, this will allow buyers to share code system reference data from a central NHS Digital Terminology Server. This will enable easier integration of local coding systems with national and international coding languages.

Using the NHS Digital Terminology Server, approved researchers and planners will be able to draw upon reference data to create their own databases, which will allow them to map local and existing coding systems such as SNOMED-CT.

CSIRO developed Ontoserver to correlate common variations in clinical terminologies to help different clinical coding software interact with each other.

The terminology servers acts as a translation service and will also support other tools including the NHS Data Dictionary, which provides a reference point for information standards – such as the standard for how a date of birth or clinical conditions should be recorded.

This will help to support integrated health and care activities within the NHS in England, NHS Digital said in a statement.

“Recording data once and then reconciling, comparing and sharing the data safely has been a long-standing challenge across the NHS. Ontoserver has the potential to transform the way in which data is captured, shared and analysed across health and care,” said Nicholas Oughtibridge, principle data architect at NHS Digital.

“NHS data is already a valuable tool in fighting disease and finding new courses of treatment, but having access to more localised data, more quickly will have a real boost for researchers,” he added.