Where does NHS-R fit? #
Brilliantly, NHS-R is already leading on many of the things from this review that are important to me. I’m going to highlight the stuff we already started doing, with nobody asking us to, and a paltry amount of funding, and then I’m going to talk about the stuff that we can make a really solid contribution to tomorrow if we’re brought in to the conversation (which, according to the review, we should be).
[if you’re reading this and you’re not me, these are just notes for now. I will make it less scrappy]
What has NHS-R already done? #
Modernising NHS service analytics #
- NHSA 4. Support an NHS analyst community
- NHSA 5. Develop an annual data conference for NHS service analysts
- NHSA 18. Ensure all training is open by default
- All NHS R training is open (and open licensed) because of course it is
- Intro
- Interactive intro
- Shiny
- Git [bare repo at time of writing but in active development ready for conference November 2022]
- RMarkdown
- All NHS R training is open (and open licensed) because of course it is
- NHSA 19. Create and maintain a curated national open library of NHS analyst code
- A wonderful open repo full of all kinds of useful stuff in the R language
Open working #
- Open 3. Make open code a boilerplate feature of all public contracts
- NHS-R already did this for NHS-R solutions, as a consequence there are tens of properly licensed repos on the NHS-R GitHub
- Open 14. Write an ‘open analytics policy for the NHS’
- We already started doing this and would be happy to contribute to work in DHSC and NHST
- Open 18. Create a ‘Code For Health’ training programme for NHS service analysts and academic researchers
- NHS-R is mentioned by name, we have already done a huge amount of work training analysts in R and related disciplines (such as git)
- Open 31. Provide guidance and training on RAP and code sharing
- Another recommendation addressed by the statements on tools repo
- Git training is forthcoming (expected November 2022)
What can NHS-R do in the future? #
Modernising NHS service analytics #
- NHSA 4. Support an NHS analyst community
- NHSA 11. Devise the content of a national training programme for NHS analysts: initial and CPD
- NHS-R wouldn’t be expected to contribute across the board, but NHS-R includes many experts in:
- RAP
- dashboard programming
- programming for statistics and machine learning
- Git, GitHub, and collaboration
- Training in data science methods
- NHS-R wouldn’t be expected to contribute across the board, but NHS-R includes many experts in:
- NHSA 12. Oversee funding and delivery of training, both open online and one-to-one
Open working #
- Open 18. Create a ‘Code For Health’ training programme for NHS service analysts and academic researchers
- NHS-R is mentioned in this recommendation- NHS-R should continue to provide readily accessible help to those using open source data science methods in their work (experiential learning) as well as contribute to formal training programmes inside and outside of NHS-R
- NHS-R could consider more “MOOC” like approaches to training (“In-person supervision is necessary for a subset of attenders, especially those seeking certification, to supervise practical work, and for marking work to evaluate competences”) and should be funded and supported to do so
Summary #
Broadly, three main areas of activity are identified above:
- Community building
- Two weekly drop in sessions
- Regular updates on GitHub issues and work triage
- More involvement of and communication with fellows
- Regular, structured communication programme featuring tweets, blogs, and podcasts
- Experiential learning
- Mentoring scheme
- NHS data science acceletator launched
- Run and co-run NHS-R training
- NHS-R solutions can include a component where training/ supervising/ assisting the team delivering them is included
- Writing code, software, and training
- Offer an “out of the box” NHS-R solution where software is provided to organisations that request it
- Contributing to policy