Care Quality Commission develops technology similar to counter terrorism to detect online health service complaints

Pilot planned for April

Technology similar to counter terrorism has been developed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to find complaints against health services online.

The CQC has consulted with defence agency spinoff Qinetiq to develop technology designed to help it ensure that the country's 45,0000 health bodies meet the minimum requirements for care standards.

Once the data has been identified it will be mined using sentiment analysis.

Alongside NHS organisations, this includes the social care sector, such as nursing homes, private health practices and dental clinics.

The commission plans to pilot the service by April, initially looking at comments on hospital web-sites, local news reports and health forums.

A full implementation is hoped to be rolled out in early 2012.

The pilot is estimated to cost less than £1m to test, while a national roll-out of the scheme could save tens-of-millions in manual labour costs.

Richard Hamblin, director of intelligence at the CQC, said: "It will make us more effective as an organisation and will allow us to spot patterns more quickly."

Further information:
Care Quality Commission