A series of apps to assist decision-making in mental and community health has won the 2022 Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Healthcare Data Analytics. The award, named after the Society’s first female fellow and pioneer of data visualisation, Florence Nightingale, celebrates data analysts in the UK health and care sector whose work has delivered better outcomes for patients.
Now in its third year, the award is supported by the Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and healthcare for people in the UK.
The 2022 winner is: ‘Developing an improvement-focused quality management system with integrated apps’ - Visual Analytics Team, East London NHS Foundation Trust
This team, through the use of data visualisation software developed apps to provide staff with easy access to clinical and non-clinical information, to help aid decision-making. Covering mental and community health in East London, Luton and Bedfordshire, the apps provide data and analysis across a variety of areas so teams are able to increase efficiency. Each app gives an integrated analysis of quality, population health, patient flow and team-based tasks so that staff can better understand wait times, review their caseloads, gain insights into patients’ demographics and be alerted in advance of serious incidents.
The project involved developing a new suite of functionality within Microsoft PowerBI, to create statistical process control charts, which were not previously available. ELFT has developed these in partnership with a Microsoft Gold Partner, Cloud2, and they are now available to all PowerBI users. More detail on this aspect of the project
here.
The judging panel found this project to be ambitious and effective, bringing together a wealth of information, in easily accessible forms, to address frontline needs. The use of real time data was very innovative and the panel was impressed with the efforts made by the team to champion the good use of data across the organisation. Staff needs were fully taken into account and both patients and carers were consulted regularly throughout the apps’ development.
Josh Keith, Assistant Director of Data Analytics at the Health Foundation, said: ‘The pandemic has shown us the importance of innovation in the use of analytics and data-driven technology. Better use of data and analytics will also be crucial to the recovery of the NHS and social care moving forward. The winning project is ambitious and has been shown to be effective, bringing together a wealth of information, in easily accessible forms, to help with decision making. It is also great to see the use of real-time data, and the efforts of the team in championing the good use of data across the organisation.’
The RSS and Health Foundation are grateful to the judging panel (Elaine Gunns, Geraint Day, Karen Facey, and Sygal Amitay) for their involvement in this year’s award.