Five organisations are collaborating to provide analytical support to the health and care system to help in the fight against COVID-19: the Health Foundation; King’s Fund; Nuffield Trust; and two specialist NHS analytical teams, Imperial College Health Partners and the Strategy Unit. The five organisations are working in a coordinated way to provide analysis and expertise to support the NHS on COVID-19, using their expertise to focus on questions that the NHS may lack the resources to look at, which may be more medium-term, cut across sectors, or benefit from independent analysis. They are sharing their knowledge, information, multi-disciplinary analytical skills, and extensive links into different parts of the health and care system.
Analytical questions
This document provides an overview of a series of analytical projects that seek to support the NHS and partners nationally in their overall response to COVID-19.
The projects have been initiated through the ‘Analytical Collaboration for COVID-19’. Through the collaboration, the organisations are supporting ad hoc immediate questions raised by national bodies but are also using their expertise to focus on questions that the NHS may lack the immediate resources to look at, which may be more medium-term, cut across sectors, or benefit from independent analysis. It is these projects that are addressed in this document.
The selected projects have been developed and prioritised by the Collaboration partners informed by discussions with key stakeholders. The overviews provided in this document are initial high-level summaries that will evolve as the projects progress. Our purpose in sharing them is to raise awareness of the work being undertaken and to help minimise duplication of effort.
If you have any queries in relation to the projects or the Analytical Collaboration, please contact the named project leads or the Collaboration project office at mlcsu.covid.analytics@nhs.net.
The list of questions being addressed, and lead organisation, is provided below. The summaries provide more information on:
- The sub-questions that will be addressed in responding to this;
- A brief summary of the approach and intended timelines;
- What will not be addressed in our response;
- Contact for more information.
| Question | Lead organisation |
|---|---|
| What are the inequalities in covid19 treatment, case, and mortality rates? Which social groups (rather than clinical groups) are most vulnerable? |
Sarah Deeny - The Health Foundation |
| What is the impact of Covid-19 on healthcare in rural areas? |
Sarah Scobie - The Nuffield Trust |
| What is the variation between hospitals in case fatality rate and what explains it (e.g. use of ventilators)? |
Mohammed Mohammed - The Strategy Unit |
| What can we learn from the way the NHS has deployed a wide range of different analytical approaches to modelling of Covid-19, the ways in which that has been organised and how decision makers have shaped and reacted to that? |
A whole Collaboration project, co-ordinated by the Strategy Unit |
| What are the levels of stress /anxiety / burnout amongst the frontline NHS and care workforce? | TBC |
| What has been the impact of the shift to telehealth on number of appointments, length of appointments and patient satisfactions? Where do we need to prioritise face to face care during the recovery phase? |
Sarah Scobie - The Nuffield Trust |
| In what circumstances / for what presentations are remote (telephone / video) GP consultations proved to be particularly useful or problematic? |
Siva Anandaciva - The Kings Fund |
| How might we capture the learning from practice innovations that have been developed out of necessity in response to the covid19 outbreak? How would we design a strategy? |
Paul Mason (Strategy Unit) - A whole Collaboration project, co-ordinated by the Strategy Unit |
| How did utilisation of other healthcare services (GPs and A&E) by non-Covid patients change, and why? |
Charles Tallack - The Health Foundation |
| What are the likely nature and scale of the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on population mental health and wellbeing? |
Andy Hood - The Strategy Unit |
| What is the impact on community services, and how might it change over time? |
Sarah Scobie - The Nuffield Trust |
| What has been the impact of Covid-19 on non-Covid morbidity and mortality (and are these directly the result of Health system pressure or social distancing measures)? |
Sarah Deeny - The Health Foundation |
| What has been the impact of the suspension of non-urgent elective activity on: a) demand b) wider morbidity and mortality, inc. variation by demographic factors? | This question will be addressed in combination with the question above. |
| What will be the impact of Covid-19, the lockdown, and NHSE guidance on waiting lists and waiting times for elective care and cancer treatment? |
Mike Woodall - The Strategy Unit |
| How would the modelled estimates of Covid-19 related deaths impact on standard mortality-based population health outcome measures? |
Paul Seamer - The Strategy Unit |
| How might Covid-19 related mortality alter the population structure and patterns of unplanned healthcare utilisation in the medium term? |
Justine Wiltshire - The Strategy Unit |
| What is the impact on the need for and use of social care for older people? (for example, arising from faster discharge from hospital, reduction in unpaid care because of social distancing). What is/ will be the impact on care homes? |
Sarah Deeny - The Health Foundation Sarah Scobie - The Nuffield Trust |
| What is the impact of social distancing policies on: (a) rates of domestic abuse, child and adult abuse (b) health behaviours c) other communicable diseases (d) incidents of accidents and falls e) rates of vaccination? |
Sarah Scobie - The Nuffield Trust |
| How can the health and care system recover after Covid-19? |
Siva Anandaciva - The Kings Fund |
Evidence - Helping you to keep up to date
We’ve identified a series of topics which we think are particularly relevant. We’ve prepared short summaries along with links to live searches on Pubmed and Google Scholar. The evidence maps for each topic are updated weekly. You can also see weekly summaries of these updates below.
With thanks to the Public Health England Knowledge and Library Services team for sharing their Pubmed search strategy for Covid19 and Coronavirus, which we’ve used and adapted.
Please note that the search strategies are pragmatic and specific rather than comprehensive and sensitive.
| Live searches | Summary | Evidence tracker | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Effects on people in care homes, nursing homes and other residential facilities |
Evidence rapid scan: Care Homes568.17 KB
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| Impacts of lifting restrictions |
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| Rehabilitation needs and post-ICU recovery for severe Covid19 patients |
Evidence rapid scan: Rehab502.28 KB
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COVID evidence tracker: Rehab54.55 KB
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| Implications of the broader impacts of Covid19 for healthcare | In progress | In progress | |
| Impact on health services of reducing non-covid related activity/access | In progress | In progress | |
| Screening and testing strategies |
|
In progress | |
| Emerging prospective whole population studies | In progress | In progress | |
| Impacts on inequalities and marginalised groups |
x |
In progress | |
| Infodemics and information literacy |
x |
x |
Weekly updates
Weekly evidence updates will be available here. If you would like to receive an alert for these evidence updates, please subscribe to our 'COVID19 Evidence' alert.
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Collaboration outputs and useful links
We’ve bookmarked a range of useful resources on Covid19 and Coronavirus via our Wakelet page of useful links (organised by collection).
This special edition of Evidence Insights is a dedicated collection of the latest evidence and resources on COVID-19, it includes; key sources of the latest intelligence, guidance, research and other useful resources.
This FutureNHS workspace provides a repository of Covid-19 (Coronavirus) Data and Analytical Resources that already exist within the public domain (unless otherwise stated) and provides a starting point for data and analytical assets to be curated.
(Please note: Registration is required for access).