Barriers and Solutions to Linking and Using Health and Social Care Data in Scotland

Integration of health and social care will require integrated data to drive service evaluation, design, joint working and research. We describe the results of a Scottish meeting of key stakeholders in this area. Potential uses for linked data included understanding client populations, mapping trajectories of dependency, identifying at risk groups, predicting required capacity for future service provision, and research to better understand the reciprocal interactions betweenhealth, socialcircumstances and care. Barriersto progress included lack of analytical capacity, incomplete understanding of data provenance and quality, intersystem incompatibility and issues of consent for data sharing. Potential solutions included better understanding the content, quality and provenance of social care data; investment in analytical capacity; improving communication between data