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!

Launched in April 2020, this thriving community now connects almost 1,400 members from a wide range of organisations - mainly in the Midlands, but increasingly from across the UK. The Network provides a supportive space for analysts to share ideas, resources, and good practice, as well as to seek advice, spark debate, and develop skills together.

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

Meet your Network lead: Rachel Caswell

Rachel is a Senior Healthcare Analyst at the Strategy Unit and the Lead for Training & Development. She's passionate about developing the Network and supporting analysts across the system to connect, learn, and lead through collaboration.

Fortnightly Huddles

At the heart of the Network are our fortnightly online Huddles, hosted 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 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 contact Rachel.

Next Huddle: 11th June (11-12): A deeper look at failure demand in healthcare

How might analysts spot failure demand in data - and what does it mean for value, equity and improvement?

Following the Strategy Unit’s 'Insights' webinar on failure demand in healthcare, this Huddle offers a chance to take the conversation further - with a more analyst-focused and interactive look at what failure demand might actually look like in our data.

Failure demand is the work created when people’s needs are not met effectively first time. It can show up as repeated contacts, avoidable follow-up activity, or demand generated by delays and fragmented care - yet it often appears in our systems and datasets as if it were productive output.

In this session I'll be joined by Alison Turner, Head of Knowledge Mobilisation at the Strategy Unit, who will introduce the key ideas, share an emerging typology of failure demand, and invite participants to think about how analysts might begin to spot and explore failure demand in their own settings. Along the way, the session will consider the hidden costs for patients, carers and staff, and ask what it would mean to bring this perspective more explicitly into everyday analytical work.

This will be a reflective and participative session, designed to help attendees test ideas, connect them to their own experience, and think about where this work could go next.
 

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!