Business intelligence

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What we do

Data

The NHS Midlands and Lancashire (ML) Business Intelligence service maximises the use of data and insight to improve health and care services for people.

Making sure organisations can deliver the best health and care services possible requires robust and innovative solutions for collecting, processing and analysing data.

Our Business Intelligence service has extensive experience of working with the organisations that make up integrated care systems (ICSs), plus NHS England and other national bodies. We are the trusted partner of integrated care boards (ICBs), trusts, local authorities, primary care and a range of other providers for the safe processing of data to produce actionable, practical insight.

How we do it

Our Business Intelligence Consultancy Unit supports the end-to-end delivery of both national and regional projects, ensuring stakeholder engagement is at the heart of system design.

Our embedded and central teams get close to your business and use this insight to accelerate the use of valuable information so that you can meet your objectives and deliver ever-better health outcomes for the people you serve.

Our technical specialists will provide you with the information you require, at a time and in a format that is suitable for you. We offer a responsive and dynamic service, which we can adapt according to your needs.

Our business intelligence service delivers data-driven improvements for health and care

NHS ML offers a complete end-to-end business intelligence service from data collection, storage, processing, linkage and cutting-edge analytics, we are committed to driving improvements in health outcomes.

  • Our data warehousing teams process huge amounts of health and care data every day: securely storing, cleaning, pseudonymising and making robust data flows available to our analytical teams and to clients.
  • Our development and reporting teams are highly skilled in using a range of tools – including Tableau, Microsoft Power BI and coding languages such as SQL, R and Python – to create interactive dashboards with a ‘live’ link to data sources.
  • Our analytical teams provide hands-on support, working as ‘partners round the table’ to interpret data, separating ‘data noise’ from significant change and drawing out new, actionable insights.

Our business intelligence expertise covers all the key priorities for health and care services – from responding to the latest urgent and emergency care data, to providing strategic support for planning and commissioning key services like primary care, elective recovery, mental health, maternity and social care.

With the NHS Long Term Plan emphasising the importance of moving away from treating illness to having a system-wide response to prevent and reduce the impact of illness, NHS ML provides extensive support for population health management and reducing health inequalities.

Combining system-wide health and care data with the wider determinants of health enables you to profile and segment your local population to intervene at person, primary care network, ‘place’ and neighbourhood levels. Our strategic partnerships with commercial providers – including Johns Hopkins University, CACI-ACORN and ArcGIS – provides additional capacity and capability from world-leading industry experts.

Our services include:

  • Advanced analytics, statistical modelling, AI and a range of data science techniques
  • Bespoke analysis to help you to understand and predict demand and to make decisions on investment to inform local health strategy planning
  • A wide range of reports and tools to enable you to benchmark, monitor and forecast activity, spend, performance and outcomes
  • Real-time urgent care tools and risk stratification to identify where need is greatest so that you are able to target clinical interventions that improve outcomes for patients.

We use cutting-edge reporting tools, such as AristotleXi and Analyst Server, which enable us to provide you with insightful and timely health intelligence.

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News, views and case studies

27 February 2024

In-depth analysis and insight: A cancer pathway review within Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Integrated Care Board

As referenced in the national NHS priorities and operational planning guidance for 2023/24, the significance of early cancer diagnosis is an NHS…

20 February 2024

Enhancing stroke risk management by developing a comprehensive reporting dashboard

The implementation of the cardiovascular disease prevention dashboard markedly enhanced stroke prevention strategies, offering healthcare providers critical data on key risk factors…

8 February 2024

Transforming tobacco control: How our data analytics improved health outcomes

The development of interactive dashboards and comprehensive data analysis significantly helped NHS Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System to enhance the effectiveness…

31 January 2024

Empowering healthcare workers in population health management

Our Health Economics Unit (HEU), in a successful collaboration with the Midlands Decision Support Network, has marked a significant milestone with the…

29 January 2024

Understanding performance drivers across urgent care pathways

Our Business Intelligence team in partnership with Herefordshire and Worcestershire Integrated Care Board, revolutionised data management and decision-making processes within the urgent care pathway, enhancing both…

14 November 2023

NHS Midlands and Lancashire(ML) exhibiting at NHS Providers Show

We are excited to share that we will be participating in the upcoming NHS Providers Show on 14-15 November. This event is…

13 November 2023

Navigating winter challenges with a proactive resilience strategy

Our strategy in navigating winter challenges enabled real-time monitoring and prompt adjustments in urgent and emergency care capacity, significantly improving patient outcomes…

9 November 2023

Driving healthcare transformation through data-driven intelligence

We achieved a system-wide enhancement in healthcare service delivery, decision-making efficiency, and operational effectiveness through advanced data management and performance analytics. Background…

3 November 2023

Examining health inequalities among people with learning disabilities in Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland

This study revealed significant health disparities among people with learning disabilities in Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland, prompting targeted prevention efforts, increased awareness…

2 November 2023

Highlights from the NHS-R/NHS.pycom Conference 2023: Fostering collaboration and innovation in healthcare analytics

At this year’s NHS-R/NHS.pycom Conference 2023, the NHS-R Community and its co-community NHS.pycom put together an exciting event to foster collaboration and…

1 November 2023

Revisit the first national Health and Care Analytics (HACA) Conference 2023

Health and Care Analytics (HACA) 2023 was the first national annual conference bringing together analysts and promoting, celebrating and advancing health and…

4 September 2023

Excellence in Informatics Accreditation achieved

We are thrilled to announce that our Data, Digital and Technology directorate has achieved the prestigious “Excellence in Informatics” Level 2 accreditation…

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How we can help health systems

Developing health systems

Acting as an independent and trusted partner within the system to facilitate working across stakeholders and integrate elements of the provider system…

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Developing health systems

Workforce resilience and transformation

Supporting systems to build a sustainable and integrated workforce, transforming systems, organisations and the workforce experience to improve resilience.

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Workforce resilience and transformation

Communications and engagement

Supporting ICSs with approaches to design and deliver effective communication, engagement and behavioural insights as a key enabler for system change and…

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Communications and engagement

Digitally enabled transformation and IT

Digitising care and partnering with systems for the transformation of digitally enabled service delivery (and other supporting processes) across vision, planning and…

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Digitally enabled transformation and IT

PHM analytics and decision support

Applying intelligence-led understanding of the health of the population to support the redesign of care and improve patient and financial outcomes across…

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PHM analytics and decision support

Place and primary care transformation

Supporting providers to work together at a place and neighbourhood level to manage common resources, integrate community teams, improve health and reduce…

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Place and primary care transformation

Clinical redesign and provider collaboration

Redesigning how health and care works across England - placing people at the centre of their own health and care and utilising…

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Clinical redesign and provider collaboration

Personalised healthcare commissioning services

Providing end-to-end funded care services, including patients as active partners in identifying their healthcare needs and then commissioning care to meet these.…

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Personalised healthcare commissioning services

Business enabling services

Delivering a wide range of support functions through transactional services, business partnering and transformation that drives efficiencies and releases value and time…

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Business enabling services
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