In an NHS increasingly shaped by data-driven decision-making, there’s no denying the growing importance of robust business intelligence (BI) tools. From operational reporting to strategic planning, tools like Power BI, Tableau, and QlikView are part of the day-to-day fabric for analysts, programme managers, finance teams, and clinical transformation leads alike. Their flexibility, familiarity, and embeddedness across Trusts and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) reflect years of thoughtful investment in skills, infrastructure, and outputs.
With the introduction of the Federated Data Platform (FDP)—a national, scalable platform for secure and interoperable data sharing across the NHS—a new foundation is being laid for cross-organisational analytics. Yet, to fully unlock its potential, the NHS needs a way to ensure that its vast existing ecosystem of BI tooling doesn’t become obsolete or, worse, isolated.
Enter FDP+: the enablement and assurance layer built specifically to activate, support, and integrate the FDP core. Where FDP provides the secure platform architecture for federated analytics, FDP+ provides the tools, software, frameworks, processes, and expert support that bring this architecture to life in local settings.
A key part of FDP+’s mission is to ensure that existing tools like Power BI, Tableau, QlikView, and others remain fully compatible and even more powerful when used alongside the FDP. Rather than forcing rebuilds or rewrites, FDP+ acts as a compatibility bridge—ensuring continuity for analysts while enabling transformation at the system level.
FDP+ as an Accelerator for Existing Analytics Tools
The transition to the Federated Data Platform doesn’t mean NHS organisations must walk away from their investments in BI tooling. Instead, FDP+ ensures those investments are protected, enhanced, and extended.
At its core, FDP+ is designed to wrap around FDP with connectors, governance models, integration patterns, and training plans that work with what NHS Trusts already use today. The goal isn’t to replace existing tools—it’s to plug them into a more connected, trusted, and intelligent platform environment.
By enabling seamless interoperability between FDP and industry-standard BI platforms, FDP+ supports organisations to:
- Access FDP-hosted data directly within their existing dashboards
- Use familiar interfaces and scripting languages (e.g., DAX, M, SQL) without needing to retrain staff
- Combine local datasets with federated data in a governed and auditable way
- Continue to deliver statutory, clinical, and operational reporting through existing frameworks
This makes it possible for NHS teams to continue generating value from the tools they know—while gaining the added benefit of federated insight, advanced governance, and cross-system analytics.
Power BI, Tableau and QlikView: Continuity Through FDP+ Integration
Among the most widely adopted tools across the NHS are Power BI, Tableau, and QlikView. These platforms power dashboards for performance tracking, demand forecasting, financial reporting, public health monitoring, and countless other use cases.
FDP+ includes native connector frameworks and API-based integration capabilities that allow these tools to:
- Connect directly to FDP-managed data stores using secure tokens and NHS-compliant authentication
- Ingest federated data from multiple sources—including local, regional, and national flows
- Perform row-level filtering, transformation, and visualisation, all within existing report environments
- Schedule, refresh, and distribute dashboards as per local requirements
This ensures that NHS analysts and BI developers can continue their workflows—without needing to rebuild dashboards from scratch or change their toolchain overnight.
Supporting a Mixed Tooling Landscape
While Power BI may be the most commonly referenced analytics tool across NHS Trusts, many ICBs and CSUs also rely on other platforms. These include:
- Tableau for geospatial health mapping
- QlikView/Qlik Sense for embedded analytics in operational teams
- SAS and R for statistical analysis
- Microsoft Excel for finance dashboards and ad hoc reporting
- Python and Jupyter for data science use cases
FDP+ recognises the value of this mixed tooling ecosystem. Its flexible architecture supports connector libraries and open standards that make it easy to integrate with a wide variety of analytical tools.
Through FDP+, NHS organisations benefit from:
- Tool-agnostic data access via ODBC/JDBC, RESTful APIs, and secure federated queries
- Governed data views that can be exposed to any tool, tailored by permission and purpose
- Support for local data warehouses and semantic layers, reducing duplication and ensuring consistency
- Training and support services to help teams optimise their tools for the federated data context
The result is a system that doesn’t force uniformity—but celebrates and supports diversity in data tools, so long as the governance is in place.
Transition Support and Assurance for BI Continuity
Even with full tooling compatibility, transition support is crucial. FDP+ includes dedicated services and transition frameworks to help organisations plan, stage, and validate the migration of reports and dashboards from current platforms into FDP-compatible environments.
This includes:
- Audit and discovery of existing BI assets, including usage metrics, data sources, and dependencies
- Mapping of FDP and local datasets to current dashboards, with gap analysis
- Governed test environments to trial connections, visuals, and refresh cycles
- Version control and documentation to track transitions and support audit readiness
- Training programs for analysts and report builders to adopt new data models and connectors
This managed approach ensures that reporting continuity is maintained at every stage and that no operational decision-making is disrupted during the move to FDP-backed data.
Federated Reporting: Enabling Cross-System Dashboards
A major benefit of FDP+ is the ability to move beyond siloed dashboards and toward federated, system-level reporting.
Using FDP+ tooling and data federation principles, NHS teams can:
- Combine local and national datasets in single dashboards
- Report on region-wide activity without exporting data from source systems
- Filter and visualise data by ICS, Trust, locality, or cohort
- Embed permissions directly into the BI tool interface
- Present aligned views to stakeholders across clinical, operational, and finance functions
This marks a significant shift: dashboards become not just outputs but living interfaces for collective decision-making across organisatio
Real-World Scenarios Enabled by FDP+ Tooling Integration
To illustrate the impact, here are several examples of how FDP+ enables BI continuity and enhancement:
1. System-Wide Elective Care Dashboard
A regional dashboard built in Power BI shows waiting list dynamics across five Trusts. Using FDP+, the data remains locally controlled but is queried securely and visualised in a federated workspace. No rebuild is required.
2. Tableau-Based Health Equity Mapping
A public health team uses Tableau to visualise vaccination uptake by postcode and deprivation index. FDP+ connectors provide access to pseudonymised immunisation data, linked with GP demographics—enabling spatial insights without leaving Tableau.
3. QlikView-Fed Urgent Care Insights
An urgent care team in an ICB uses QlikView to monitor ambulance arrivals, ED throughput, and length of stay. FDP+ feeds real-time data via secure APIs, ensuring operational continuity and near-real-time intelligence.
Each of these shows the same principle: FDP is the platform; and FDP+ is the enabler.
No-Code Enablement for Non-Technical Users
Beyond support for developers and analysts, FDP+ also includes tooling for non-technical users to explore data through:
- Pre-configured, FDP-connected Power BI dashboards for common NHS metrics
- Self-service interfaces with natural language querying and search
- AI-driven dashboard suggestions and anomaly alerts
- Guided dashboard builders with drag-and-drop functionality
This ensures that FDP adoption isn’t just for data teams—it’s for anyone who relies on information to do their job better.
Training, Templates and Governance for BI at Scale
Recognising that tools are only as effective as their users, FDP+ includes structured training and governance services:
- FDP+-aligned Power BI and Tableau templates for clinical, financial, and operational reporting
- Role-based training pathways for ICB analysts, performance managers, clinicians, and executive users
- Guides for dataset certification, data quality assurance, and dashboard publishing
- Community forums and knowledge hubs to share practices across Trusts and regions
This creates an environment where BI is not only tool-driven, but governed, shareable, and continuously improving.
Empowering the NHS to Keep Building on What Works
The introduction of the Federated Data Platform marks a bold new chapter in NHS data strategy. But the most powerful transformations are those that honour and elevate the systems already in place—not discard them.
FDP+ is designed to do exactly that.
By enabling seamless compatibility with existing tools like Power BI, Tableau, and QlikView, FDP+ ensures that:
- NHS analysts retain their workflows, tools, and expertise
- Existing dashboards and reports continue to deliver value
- Federated data becomes accessible without disruption
- Governance and compliance are embedded into every layer
- Future innovation is grounded in trust, continuity, and capability
This is not about starting over. It’s about going further together—with the tools and teams already delivering impact across the NHS.
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