Welcome to the National Analyst Network

Thank you for being part of our growing community

The National Analyst Network is a practical, welcoming and peer-led community for analysts, data scientists, intelligence colleagues and others using data, evidence and insight to support strategic commissioning and better decision-making across health, care and wider public services.

Building on the success of the Midlands Analyst Network, the National Analyst Network widens this community so that colleagues from across the country can connect, share learning, discuss common challenges and strengthen the contribution of analysis in practice.

The Network provides a supportive space to share ideas, resources and good practice; seek advice; ask questions; spark debate; and develop skills together. It is part of the Strategic Commissioning Intelligence Centre and brings together colleagues from across the wider analytical community, recognising that strategic commissioning depends on insight from many organisations, sectors and perspectives.

Meet your Network lead: Rachel Caswell

Rachel is a Senior Healthcare Analyst at the Strategy Unit and the Lead for Training & Development. She has led the Midlands Analyst Network since its early days and is passionate about supporting analysts to connect, learn from each other, share practical expertise and strengthen the role of analysis in decision-making.

Fortnightly Huddles

At the heart of the Network are our fortnightly online Huddles, hosted on MS Teams. Huddles are informal but informative sessions covering a wide range of topics linked to analysis, intelligence, evidence, decision-making and strategic commissioning.

You are very welcome to join any Huddle that feels useful or interesting to you. You do not need to be a member of the National Analyst Network to attend a Huddle, but joining the Network means you can be kept up to date with future Huddles, events, resources and opportunities to contribute.

We welcome contributions from Network members, as well as speakers from academia, health and care organisations, national bodies, subject specialists and, occasionally, international presenters.

For quick access to a Huddle, please use the link below. If you have any questions about the Huddles - including how to join the Network, access previous recordings, suggest a topic or present at a future session - please contact Rachel Caswell at rachel.caswell@nhs.net or complete this form.

Next Huddle: 17th September - details to follow

Details coming soon

How to join the Huddle

Via the NAN members' Calendar invite
Via Teams link below
Via the Eventbrite registration process - to follow

I look forward to seeing you on Thursday 17th September 2026!

Teams link via your calendar invite - if you don't have this - see below!

Click here to join the meeting Join us at 11 am!

Up and coming Huddles

17/09/26: Midlands Prevention Pathway Toolkit with Dr Su Xavier and Olivia Conroy, NHS England, Midlands
01/10/26: Mastering Statistical Process Controls in Healthcare with Professor Mohammed, Strategy Unit
15/10/26: Better homes, better health: insights from linking housing and health data with Tom Prendergast, The Health Foundation
26/11/26: Exploring workforce opportunities for analysts with Neil Morgan and Jon Adamson, MLCSU

Useful resources

The Strategic Commissioning Intelligence Centre (SCIC) is a new national initiative and core part of the Strategic Commissioning Development Programme (SCDP), in partnership with the Strategy Unit. See here for the collection of resources and learning materials to support strategic commissioning

NAN Huddle: 03/09/2026

Topic: Making more strategic use of analysis: what has to be true if analysts are to play a fuller role in decision making?

With Fraser Battye and Charles Tallack

Presentation - Fraser Battye

Return

MAN Huddle: 08/01/2026

Topic: From hospital to community: shifting care or swimming uphill?

With Fraser Battye, Head of Policy at the Strategy Unit

Return

MAN Huddle: 22/01/2026

Topic: What hospital activity could be done differently?

With Sarah Lucas, Healthcare Analyst, Strategy Unit

Presentation

Huddle Q&A

Return

MAN Huddle: 05/02/2026

Topic: Maximising the use of ethnicity data – developing a guide for analysts

With Mike Woodall, Analytics Manager, The Strategy Unit

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 19/02/2026

Topic: Using data to define specialist hospitals’ role in the left shift

With Izaak Gilchrist, Senior Analyst at Edge Health

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 05/03/2026

Topic: Building an open source model to understand future demand in CKD/KRT pathways

with Strategy Unit colleagues

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 19/03/2026

Topic: Discharged without a diagnosis: what does it mean for patients, providers and improvement?

with Andrew Jones and Steven Wyatt, The Strategy Unit

Discharged without a diagnosis

Return

MAN Huddle: 02/04/2026

Topic: Socio-economic deprivation and changes in self-reported health over a decade

with Freya Tracey (The Health Foundation) and Rhian Davey (Office for National Statistics)

Presentation

Links:

Return

MAN Huddle: 16/04/2026

Topic: Chart with Purpose

with Simon Wellesley-Miller, Senior Analytical Manager NHS England

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 30/04/2026

Topic: How to evaluate healthcare policy: from data to interpretation

with Professor Alex Bottle, Professor of Medical Statistics at Imperial College London

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 14/05/2026

Topic: Data reflections from the domestic abuse portfolio

With Nicola Dennis, Consultant in Public Health, and Sophie Ross, Public Health Practitioner (Analyst), Isle of Wight Council

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 11/06/2026

Topic: A deeper look at failure demand in healthcare

With Alison Turner, Head of Knowledge Mobilisation, The Strategy Unit

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 28/05/2026

Topic: The Art of the Adjacent Possible

With Neil Pettinger, Kurtosis

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 25/06/2026

Topic: From Analyst to Professional: Inside AphA and its Specialist Networks

With Jane Johnston (Co-CEO, AphA) and Corielyn Bromley (Executive Director of Continued Professional Development, AphA)

Return

MAN Huddle: 23/07/2026

Topic: Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) + Decision Quality

With Deb Lessard, Director of Corporate Risk Management Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC)

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 06/08/2026

Topic: Do we need more hospital beds?

With Lucy Morgan, Head of Analytics and Modelling at the Strategy Unit

Presentation

Return

MAN Huddle: 20/08/2026

Topic: Hospital Admission Thresholds, the Left Shift, and Why Admission Avoidance Schemes May Not Reduce Bed Occupancy

With Andrew Jones and Steven Wyatt The Strategy Unit

Presentation

Return

2026

		Topic / YouTube Link	Presenters	Presentations
September	03/09/2026	Making more strategic use of analysis: what has to be true if analysts are to play a fuller role in decision making?	Fraser Battye and Charles Tallack	Presentation - Fraser Battye
August	20/08/2026	Hospital Admission Thresholds, the Left Shift, and Why Admission Avoidance Schemes May Not Reduce Bed Occupancy	Andrew Jones and Steven Wyatt The Strategy Unit	Presentation
August	06/08/2026	Do we need more hospital beds?	Lucy Morgan, Head of Analytics and Modelling at the Strategy Unit	Presentation
July	23/07/2026	Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) + Decision Quality	Deb Lessard, Director of Corporate Risk Management Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC)	Presentation
June	25/06/2026	From Analyst to Professional: Inside AphA and its Specialist Networks	Jane Johnston (Co-CEO, AphA) and Corielyn Bromley (Executive Director of Continued Professional Development, AphA)
June	11/06/2026	A deeper look at failure demand in healthcare	Alison Turner, Head of Knowledge Mobilisation, The Strategy Unit	Presentation
May	28/05/2026	The Art of the Adjacent Possible	Neil Pettinger, Kurtosis	Presentation
May	14/04/2026	Data reflections from the domestic abuse portfolio	Nicola Dennis, Consultant in Public Health, and Sophie Ross, Public Health Practitioner (Analyst), Isle of Wight Council	Presentation
April	30/04/2026	How to evaluate healthcare policy: from data to interpretation	Professor Alex Bottle, Professor of Medical Statistics at Imperial College London	Presentation
April	16/04/2026	Chart with Purpose	Simon Wellesley-Miller, Senior Analytical Manager NHS England	Presentation
April	02/04/2026	Socio-economic deprivation and changes in self-reported health over a decade	Freya Tracey (The Health Foundation) and Rhian Davey (Office for National Statistics)	Presentation Links: Socioeconomic disadvantage and self-reported health Dataset - Changes in individual self-reported health between Census 2011 and Census 2021, England
March	19/03/2026	Discharged without a diagnosis: what does it mean for patients, providers and improvement?	Andrew Jones and Steven Wyatt, The Strategy Unit	Discharged without a diagnosis
March	05/03/2026	Building an open source model to understand future demand in CKD/KRT pathways	With Strategy Unit colleagues	Presentation
February	19/02/2026	Using data to define specialist hospitals’ role in the left shift	Izaak Gilchrist, Senior Analyst at Edge Health	Presentation
February	05/02/2026	Maximising the use of ethnicity data – developing a guide for analysts	Mike Woodall, Analytics Manager, The Strategy Unit	Presentation
January	22/01/2026	What hospital activity could be done differently?	Sarah Lucas, Healthcare Analyst, Strategy Unit	Presentation Huddle Q&A
January	08/01/2026	From hospital to community: shifting care or swimming uphill?	Fraser Battye, Head of Policy at the Strategy Unit

2025

	Date	Topic / YouTube Link	Presenters	Presentations
December	11/12/2025	An Analyst's Perspective on the Federated Data Platform	Matt Oakes, Head of Intelligence & Analytics at Sherwood Forest Hospitals	Presentation
November	27/11/2025	The Networked Data Lab - What can linked data tell us about the elective care waiting list?	Tom Prendergast, Senior Data Analyst (The Health Foundation), Anna Palczewska, Senior Data Scientist and Josh Elvidge-Murgatroyd, Data Engineer/ Analyst (West Yorkshire ICB)
November	13/11/2025	The impact of NHS waiting lists on patient decisions to privately fund treatment	Steven Wyatt, Head of Research and Policy at the Strategy Unit
October	30/10/2025	National Competency Framework – 2 Years on. Where are the adopters now?	Sarah Blundell, Lead for Data and Analytical Development, and Andy Lavelle, Senior Manager for Analytical Professionalisation (NHS England)
October	16/10/2025	The Accidental Project Manager	Jo Stanford, CEO, Healthcare Project and Change Association (HPCA)	Presentation Resources: 02. PESTLE 03. Risk Planning AI for Data Analytics in Healthcare by Chat GPT HPCA MS Teams Planner Setup Guide
October	02/10/2025	Learn how to measure and solve “exit block”	Neil Pettinger (Kurtosis)	Presentation
September	18/09/2025	I wish I was macho instead of just deep	Dr Marc Farr, Chief Analytical Officer at East Kent Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust & Kent & Medway ICB, and Chair of the Chief Data & Analytical Officers Network	Presentation
September	04/09/2025	Introducing the Strategy Unit Demand Model: sizing hospitals & shifting care closer to home	Chris Beeley, Head of Data Science, The Strategy Unit	Data Science @ The Strategy Unit – Transforming Hospital Planning with an Open-Source Demand Model
August	07/08/2025	Simplifying statistical process control with I-prime charts	Jacob Anhøj and Professor Mohammed A Mohammed
July	24/07/2025	‘Rules of Thumb' for assessing the quality of analysis	Fraser Battye (Strategy Unit) and Danielle Jefferies (The Kings Fund)	Presentation Questions and comments from Rules of Thumb Huddle
July	10/07/2025	Understanding the costs and benefits of interventions in cervical cancer	Lisa Cummins, Lead Health Economist, Health Economics Unit	Presentation
June	26/06/2025	Humans, AI and the Importance of Data Literacy	With Dan Isaac, Data Literacy & Training Lead, Exeter University
June	12/06/2025	Reshaping the pattern of care - Sizing and exploring the left shift challenge	With Jennifer Wood and Justine Wiltshire, The Strategy Unit	Presentation
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

2024

	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)