We need more than "black box"; systems (Goldacre)

The system should be cautious around imagining that it can push away the challenge of TREs – and all work with NHS data – by procuring ‘black box’ services. Building platforms, capacity and modern working methods for data is a complex technical challenge, requiring deep knowledge across a range of domains: data science, data architecture, and software development; but also clinical informatics, NHS data needs, health data research, and more.

The prevalence of code sharing (Goldacre)

Another greatest hit from the Goldacare report, in the section on open working, “The prevalence of code sharing” (all material reused under OGL) “ONS covid reports: the team was unable to find any analytic code for the platform or covid analyses (but extensive and excellent open code training elsewhere) OpenSAFELY covid reports: all code for the platform, data management and analysis all shared automatically on GitHub (declaration of interest: BG is PI on OpenSAFELY) PHE covid reports: the team was unable to find any analytic code for PHE reports on topics such as ethnicity and COVID-19; but extensive code sharing for their (excellent) COVID-19 dashboards DECOVID (Turing / HDRUK PIONEER platform created for a wide range of covid research teams from a large number of universities): the team was unable to find code for the platform or analyses ICODA (HDRUK’s flagship COVID-19 data analysis platform initiated in June 2020): the team was unable to find code for the platform or analyses (but also no outputs to date) HDRUK / NHSD / BHF TRE: the team was unable to find code for the platform; but some scripts are shared for a paper describing the data accessible through it, and one research preprint (the platform’s only output to date)” I love that they did this, but that’s not why I’m writing a blog post about.

The Goldacre review- greatest hits

I absolutely love the Goldacare review, I really can’t praise it enough, and I will be doing a lot of work based on it in the coming weeks and months looking at it from the perspective of my own Trust and, (with others) from the perspective of my ICS, and NHS-R. NHS-R has a couple of repos looking at matters related to the review (statement on tools and NHS-R vision) and we need to do some thinking about stuff that particularly comes out of this review that we can look at (which I have started doing on my own, community effort will follow).

In defence of the ordinary

I think this might be a general cultural problem, but I notice it a lot in my field of healthcare analytics. There are lots of “case studies” and “pathfinders”, that kind of thing, groups of people who are doing amazing stuff. I don’t think that it has the desired effect though. People look at these groups doing incredibly complicated things with new tools and they think it just doesn’t apply to them.

In defence of looking at jobs

Nobody should ever have to apologise for looking at jobs, however settled they are. Looking at jobs just means one of: there might be a better job out there and I want to find it if there is I want to understand what skills people are recruiting so I can learn and do the right stuff I’m interested in the jobs and skills that are popular now because I want to understand the playing field of human resources in analytics as an actual or potential leader I want to understand my worth under agenda for change to I can advocate for the development of my professional role (and my salary ) in my current role Any manager that doesn’t like that is a fool, a charlatan, a psychopath, or all three, and then you can add:

In defence of holiday working

This might be a little bit controversial, this post. If you hate it please don’t be offended, it’s just my opinion. Totally open to being completely wrong always, especially here. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the importance of taking your leave, and encouraging your staff to take your leave, and I do think it’s super important to take leave, and I certainly think if you’re managing someone you should definitely encourage them to take their leave.

In defence of eating

One weird thing in remote/ pandemic times is that people have started turning their cameras off when they eat. I’m all for the right to turn your camera off, I think you should be able to do that at any time without giving a reason, but I think it’s a shame if people think that they can’t eat on camera. I have therefore been glad to eat several large, difficult to eat things in meetings on camera recently, to perhaps give others the idea that it’s okay if they want to do it too.

In defence of dashboards

I’ve had lively debates about dashboards with various people, including someone in my own team, and somebody on Twitter just mentioned that dashboards are often not used (this blog post will be my response to this tweet, not the first time I’ve answered a tweet with a blog and very on brand for me 😉). I should acknowledge at the top that I’m The Dashboard Guy. I’ve written books about making dashboards in R.

Make statistics sexy

I’ve been enjoined to make statistics sexy. It’s really taking root in my brain.There are no easy answers in statistics; it’s a long, hard road. It’s rigorous, and honest, and that’s why I love it. Frank Harrell’s talk at NHS-R typified this. The price of truth can be very high- like binning all the data from your £1m study instead of doing what many do which is slice it into so many pieces that something looks shiny and publishing that.

Data saves lives- and so does open code

I’m reading data saves lives. And look, it’s that thing that I say all the time, that I have pinned on my Twitter profile, the thing I’ve heard time and time again for a decade that everybody just stands around nodding at and nothing actually changes. I quote: “Working in the open Public services are built with public money, and so the code they are based on should be made available for digital pioneers across the health and care system, and those working with it, to reuse and build on.