ANALYTICAL TAP

Who are we?

Analytical Services are a group of around 40 staff primarily based at Waverley Gate but out working in hospitals with Services wherever possible. We provide information, insight and analytical support (including quality improvement techniques) across the whole of NHS Lothian’s health and social care provision activities.

 What do we do?

Our analysts offer a range of skills and services. We undertake a wide variety of work across a number of different areas to support decision making within NHS Lothian. These areas include:

• ·         NHS Board corporate reporting
• ·         Scheduled care – waiting list and waiting times
• ·         Unscheduled care – emergency department, flow centre activity and delayed discharges
• ·         Public health
• ·         Maternity
• ·         Children’s health
• ·         Mental health
• ·         Theatres activity
• ·         Prescribing - Community and hospital
• ·         Antimicrobials
• ·         Primary care and GP data
• ·         Infection control services
• ·         Outpatient services
• ·         Quality Improvement Programme (hip fractures, endoscopies, stroke services, mental health and chemotherapy)
• ·         Links to IJB and Health and Social Care Partnerships
• ·         Cancer data intelligence support
• ·         Research and Safe Haven support
• ·         HR dashboard support

What data do we work with?

 We can access many different datasets and data sources across NHS Lothian including TRAKCARE, ORSOS, national data files, prescribing data, some GP data and other bespoke systems.

We use tools such as Microsoft Excel, Business Objects, R, SQL and Tableau to extract, analyse and share data and information with our customers. We can work with you to create routine reports that run on a regular basis that you can access directly to get the information needed, at the time it is needed.  If a report that you currently receive isn’t quite what you need, we can usually amend or adjust it to meet your requirements.

We can also offer support with data and analysis to larger and longer term projects and service improvement work. This type of work could be simply providing data to you to allow you to do your own analysis and investigation or we can help you with analysis too by providing insight and data intelligence as well as more sophisticated statistical and improvement methodologies if required.

 Tableau Dashboards

 We maintain the majority of the Tableau dashboards that present data on a wide variety of services. These can be found on the NHS Lothian Intranet indexed under either ‘Tableau’ or ‘Dashboards’. If you need a login or help with knowing where to start with these, please get in touch with the team.

If you can’t find what you are looking for, or if the dashboard could be altered to better meet your requirements, please get in touch.

We can also develop bespoke dashboards for you to present data in a way that helps you to manage your patients and services.

 Bespoke support

 We have analysts who support specific topic areas on an ongoing basis, developing expert knowledge of services and providing analytical support for major developments or service redesign work, for example.  These analysts are usually funded by the particular service or national programme funding to support specific objectives but are managed, developed and supported within the wider analyst network.

 Working together

 We have started to develop a network for analysts across all of NHS Lothian and Health and Social Care Partnerships to support professional development and share learning and expertise. If there are data managers or analysts within your service area that you think would be interested in linking with Analytical Services, we would be keen to hear from them.

 We have created a Tableau dashboard of analyst contact and topic details to help people find analysts working on particular topic areas. This can be found by clicking on the ‘Analysts Across NHS Lothian’ link from our Intranet homepage.