As part of our initiative that explored how data can inform decision making, even when decisions need to be made based on imperfect data, we have published our final Statistics Under Pressure case study, as well as a number of policy recommendations based on our findings.
The new case study highlights the vital role statisticians played in the Infected Blood Inquiry, which looked into what is widely regarded as the greatest scandal in NHS history.
The Infected Blood Inquiry was tasked with answering questions around how many people were infected and how many died. Lead by Sir David Spiegelhalter, an expert team of statisticians were appointed by the Inquiry to build complex multi-stage models, drawing on diverse sources and making careful assumptions to estimate infection and mortality rates.
The case study explores some of the limitations of the decades-old data available to the team and how they nevertheless provided robust estimates and confidence ratings. It also explores the impact of the decisions they made and key lessons learned from the process.
This final case study in our nine-part series has fed into the principles of Statistics Under Pressure, as well as our new policy recommendations. The recommendations outline practical steps policymakers can take to ensure that data and analyses are able to feed into decision-making in pressurised situations.
You can read more in our final case study here.
You can also read the full policy recommendations here.