Welcome to the Midlands Analyst Network

Thank you for being part of our growing community! If you are an analyst who works in health & care or the wider public sector, then join the Midlands Analyst Network!

The Network has almost 1,000 members from a range of health and care and other organisations and with analysts or people with an interest in analysis, from the Midlands and many other areas too. Established in April 2020 the Network provides a space for analysts across the Midlands and beyond to share information, ideas and resources, as well as seek advice and guidance from one another.

I love how the huddles have grown into a space beyond simply sharing ideas and work, to a regular opportunity for analysts to come together as a community. They frequently lead to insightful and previously unconsidered questions and debates and also serve as a fantastic welcoming opportunity for those dipping their toes into the world of analytics and improved decision making. Andi Orlowski, Director of the Health Economics Unit

Your Network Lead: Rachel Caswell

Rachel is a Senior Healthcare Analyst in the Strategy Unit who is working to broaden the scope of the Network. Rachel is also the Operational Lead for Training & Development.

Fortnightly Huddles

Rachel hosts a fortnightly online Huddle on MS Teams (see link below). The Huddles cover a large range of topics and you are very welcome to join one at any time – for quick access to a Huddle, just follow the link below. You don’t have to be a member of the Midlands Analyst Network to come to a Huddle but if you’d like to be kept up to date with all future Huddles and training opportunities then just contact Rachel (rachel.caswell@nhs.net) and we’ll take it from there.

We try to keep them as informal but as informative as possible and welcome contributions from Network members as well from academia, subject specialists, national and occasionally international presenters.

If you have any queries about the Huddles, how to access them, if you want to find out what’s gone before, or you want to present then please do contact Rachel.

Next Huddle: 12th June (11-12): Reshaping the pattern of care - Sizing and exploring the left shift challenge

In this week's huddle, we welcome Jen Wood (Strategy Unit) who will be presenting findings from our latest modelling work and policy review. Jen and colleagues will demonstrate their novel techniques for sizing the opportunity of shifting care from acute to community, and talking about the tools and evidence they have generated to help policy makers, clinicians and analysts make the difficult choices that might facilitate this shift.

This promises to be a fascinating session, especially to those who are interested in getting fresh insights into what moving care to community actually means.

I look forward to seeing you on Thursday 12th June at 11!

Other events

And we hold various other events such as our joint webinar with Health Data Research which we held on 28th January, Failure Parade: why and how we learn more when things don’t go as planned - HDR UK - see recording below, in the next few days for unmissable content!

Same Teams link as usual and if you don't have this - it's here!

Click here to join the meeting Hop in at 11 am!

14/11/2024

Ordnance Survey (OS) Data supporting local health

MAN Huddle: 14/11/2024

Ordnance Survey (OS) Data supporting local health

View on YouTube

Return

31/10/2024

NHSquicker: Shaping Demand for Urgent Care Using Real-Time Data and Digital Nudges

MAN Huddle: 31/10/2024

NHSquicker: Shaping Demand for Urgent Care Using Real-Time Data and Digital Nudges

With Nav Mustafee, Professor of Operations Management and Analytics at the University of Exeter Business School

	Date	Topic / YouTube Link	Presenters	Presentations
May	29/05/2025	How we are using data in Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland, to drive transformation of urgent and emergency care services	With Janine Dellar, Head of Strategic Business Intelligence and George MacDonald, Data Scientist	Presentation: Complex Care Evaluation Health Inequalities in ED Attendance Data
May	15/05/2025	An introduction to problem structuring	With Steven Wyatt, Head of Research and Policy at the Strategy Unit	Presentation
May	01/05/2025	An update AphA (Association of Professional Healthcare Analysts)	With Jane Johnston (Co-CEO) and Jeannette Fraser (AphA SE Branch Lead & WIHD Network Committee Lead)	Presentation
April	17/04/2025	Evaluating the Heart Failure Targeted Funding Programme 2023/24 (Strategy Unit)	With Faizan Mahmood and Andre Bilbrough, from the Strategy Unit
April	03/04/2025	Toy models – Complex problems in small packages! and How much healthcare will our population need in five, ten, 20 years' time?”	With Andy Hood and Lucy Morgan, and Paul Seamer, from the Strategy Unit	Presentation - Paul Seamer Presentation - Toy Models
March	20/03/2025	Updates from the Warwickshire Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA)	With Michael Maddocks Programme Manager – JSNA, Warwickshire CC
February	20/02/2025	Public expenditure in the last year of life - Nuffield Trust & Health Economics Unit	With Lisa Cummins and Gayathri Kumar, The Health Economics Unit
February	06/02/2025	Making Data Count: What is it and why should I know about it?	With Adam Smith, Making Data Count Team	Presentation
January	23/01/2025	Process Mining in Healthcare – Opportunities and Challenges	With Owen Johnson, Director of Impact, School of Computer Science, University of Leeds

	Date	Topic / YouTube Link	Presenters	Presentations
December	12/12/2024	COMPLEX-IT: Enabling Non-Experts to Leverage Advanced Computational Modelling for Policy Evaluation and Decision Making	with Brian Castellani, Professor of Social and Public Health, Director, Research Methods Centre, Co-Director, Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing, Durham University
November	28/11/2024	HDR UK Midlands – Building a regional data science network	with Kevin Dunn, HDR UK Programme Manager	Presentation
November	14/11/2024	Ordinance Survey (OS) Data supporting local health
October	31/10/2024	NHSquicker: Shaping Demand for Urgent Care Using Real-Time Data and Digital Nudges	with Nav Mustafee, Professor of Operations Management and Analytics at the University of Exeter Business School
October	17/10/2024	Modelling Long-Term Changes in Population Health State and Associated Healthcare Resource Requirements	with Luke Shaw (NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB)	Presentation Slides HACA Recap Slides
October	03/10/2024	National Competency Framework – 1 year on!	with Sarah Blundell and Andy Lavelle (NHSE)
September	05/09/2024	Health equity and the humaniverse	with Dr Matt Thomas, Head of Strategic Insight & Foresight, British Red Cross	Presentation
August	22/08/2024	The Empowering Futures, Growing Up Well in Warwickshire, Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA)	with Michael Maddocks, Matthew Head, and Thomas Mansbridge (Warwickshire County Council)
August	08/08/2024	Health inequalities in 2040: Current and future patterns of inequalities in illness in England	with Ann Raymond, The Health Foundation	Presentation
July	11/07/2024	What are the impacts of poor questions from decision makers, and how do we improve this?	with Andrew Lavelle, NHS England
June	27/06/2024	Describing general practice staffing mix using latent profile analysis	with Alex Lawless, The Health Foundation
June	13/06/2024	How much healthcare will our population need in 5, 10, 20 years’ time?	with Paul Seamer (Strategy Unit)	Presentation
May	30/05/2024	Forecasting in Retail and Healthcare – addressing common themes	with Dr Bahman Rostami-Tabar, Professor of Data-Driven Decision Science, Cardiff University and Dr Stephan Kolassa, Data Science Expert
May	16/05/2024	Assessing impact of specialist workforce - children & young people with epilepsy	Joe Lillington, HEU
May	02/05/2024	Kent JSNA Cohort Model	with Abraham George and Peter Lacey	Presentation Q and A
April	18/04/2024	The National Competency Framework – an update	with Sarah Blundell and Andy Lavelle (NHSE)
April	04/04/2024	How to automatically backup SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports		Presentation Program code
March	21/03/2024	The 85% bed occupancy fallacy	with Nathan Proudlove, The University of Manchester	Presentation
March	07/03/2024	Using the Community Services Dataset to investigate variation in access	with Andrew Jones (Strategy Unit)
February	22/02/2024	How COVID activity and system responses impacted Urgent Care	with Andy McCann, and Kelly Bishop (MLCSU)	Presentation
February	08/02/2024	The gap between need and supply of GP practice consultations	with Steven Wyatt (Strategy Unit)
January	25/10/2024	What’s driving increasing length of stay in hospitals since 2019?	with Andrew Mooney (The Health Foundation)
January	11/01/2024	Long term trends in GP practice consultation rates	with Steven Wyatt (Strategy Unit)

Midlands Analyst Network and Huddles MDSN June 2024

Welcome to the Midlands Analyst Network

Thank you for being part of our growing community! If you are an analyst who works in health & care or the wider public sector, then join the Midlands Analyst Network!

Your Network Lead: Rachel Caswell

Fortnightly Huddles

Next Huddle: 12th June (11-12): Reshaping the pattern of care - Sizing and exploring the left shift challenge

Other events

Same Teams link as usual and if you don't have this - it's here!

Click here to join the meeting Hop in at 11 am!

Recordings of past Huddles are available to view from the links below, including:

2025

2024

2023

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Midlands Analyst Network and Huddles

MDSN

June 2024