Decision-making is an art; we can train at it, rehearse and access tools to support us.

However, humans are also subject to a wide range of biases which can undermine the quality of decision making, especially in complex real-world systems.

COVID-19 has shone a light on health inequalities; it has “laid bare our longstanding social, economic and political inequalities…” (BMJ, 2020) and this is against a backdrop of declining life expectancy in our poorest communities, well before COVID-19.

The Marmot review 10 years on found that regional and socioeconomic differences in health are large and growing.

The Midlands Decision Support Unit Network has defined its analytical priorities for 20/21.

This week’s theme described the projects being carried out on behalf of the Network to respond to these priorities, the outputs they will produce and how these will be shared with the DSU Network and its partners.

This included the presentation of work already completed on behalf of the Network, focusing on resource usage in the last two years of life.

The Midlands Decision Support Unit (DSU) Network is a new and emerging approach to bring together analytical resource across a region, develop analytical skills collectively and share learning from analytical projects.

This week’s theme describes how the network will operate, shares some of the learning from systems who have adopted this approach already and describes how evidence will underpin the Network’s approach to decision-making. 

Transformation in health and care has been rapid and intensive, particularly in 2020.

Asking the right analytical questions requires joined-up approaches, between leaders and their analytical workforce, as well as broader system stakeholders.

This week’s theme focused on the vital issues facing decision-makers, the contexts they are operating in, and from where they might draw support. 

Now taking registrations of interest for our free, online 6-week festival: INSIGHT 2020  - Details of each event are below.

We are delighted to announce our partnership with Ipsos MORI, a leader in social research and evaluation.

NHS-R Community's Annual Conference was a big success!

It’s harder than ever to be a leader in health and care, moving through a rising storm of changes. The ask of STPs and their constituent organisations is evolving as experience of system working grows. Working in systems means dealing with complexity, so steering in one direction can lead to unpredictable results. Coaching is well-placed to deal with the ambiguities of the health and care system today. Coaching allows individuals to step out of the storm into a ‘safe space’, one which isn’t subject to the usual constraints of the day job. We have developed our coaching offer to set out the support we can provide at a high level. It also describes the ways in which we can apply a ‘coaching approach’ to increase the effectiveness of team development, training and programme workshops.

The value of R and its use within the NHS

Often regarded as one of the best healthcare systems in the world, the NHS was launched in 1948 with the guiding principle of being free at the point of delivery – a kind of crowd funded open-source freeware equivalent of healthcare.