NHS prescribing data glossary

Integrated Care Board (ICB).

The NHS bodies that plan and pay for services, medicines included, for their area of England.

Integrated Care Boards are the statutory NHS organisations that commission services for a geography, prescribing budgets included. They replaced clinical commissioning groups in July 2022; England started with 42, and mergers have since reduced the count.

For prescribing analysis they are the natural mid-level unit: big enough to be stable, small enough to show real variation. Formulary decisions, switch programmes and prescribing incentives operate at ICB level, which is why the same molecule can grow 20% in one ICB while shrinking next door. That variation is usually policy, not epidemiology.