05.12.13
Open data platform
Source: National Health Executive Nov/Dec 2013
The Clinical Research Network, part of the National Institute for Health Research, has implemented a new business intelligence tool as the first step in a project to eventually link all of its datasets together. NHE spoke to the NIHR’s
Bryony Walsh, project manager for the work.
The NHS is the largest repository of health data in the world.
But as Bryony Walsh of the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) – the ‘research delivery arm’ of the NHS – told us: “In theory this should put the UK in an unrivalled position.
“It should make us better than any other country at carrying out research; we have the tools in place to be able to identify the right patients and locations. But we’re all aware that in reality the NHS data often lies in silos and is quite hard to search.”
The CRN generates a huge amount of data, with over 630,000 people recruited to studies it supports in 2012-2013 alone.
Walsh said it had looked into its systems recently and found it had 55 different systems in place, 35 different ways of collating reports, and six different databases. She said: “We were effectively pulling information together with paper and string – but we wanted to move towards the vision of a single dataset, or at least having a single reporting source that pulls in from all those different datasets.”
The organisation decided to use a business intelligence tool developed by QlikView, called the Business Discovery platform, to create a new reporting tool it calls its Open Data Platform (ODP).
Linking the data
Two datasets are already linked in: the CSP (the NIHR Coordinated System for gaining NHS Permission), which standardises and streamlines the process of getting NHS permission for commercial and non-commercial clinical research studies in England; and the UKCRN Portfolio database, which holds the information on clinical studies being undertaken.
Walsh told us: “There’s a future vision to link all our different data gathering systems together in one place.
“That is the ultimate aim. We’ve got a small team, so realistically it’s not going to be something that happens very quickly.”
She said QlikView was the “simplest solution available”, which was important considering the large number of potential users. The system had to be intuitive and easy to train people on when necessary.
The two datasets already linked in are open to anyone in the NIHR or NHS, with about 1,500 users so far in the first eight months the project has been live.
But soon other datasets will be added that are open to the general public, including the league tables published in collaboration with The Guardian on how each NHS trust is performing on research to improve treatments. “We’re putting that onto QlikView as an open app so anyone can see it – there’s no sensitive data or privacy concerns with that dataset,” Walsh told us. “But it will give people more ability to really interrogate that data. When we start having more open apps, we’ll have a much larger userbase.”
Dash for dashboards
The platform is also a great tool for creating ‘dashboards’, she explained. “As with all areas of the NHS, we do a lot of reporting. Previously we’d have created a report and uploaded it onto a portal on a Friday, with different information managers from all areas of the NIHR downloading that spreadsheet and spending an awful lot of time creating pivot tables and all sorts of different dashboards to supply to their managers.
“But now people can go into our raw data and pick and choose the bits of data that are the most relevant, and managers can have a dashboard set up on their screen, which they can go into on a daily or weekly basis, and refresh the information and have up-to-date information on their reporting.
“They no longer have to rely on information managers and emailed requests.
“Dashboards are great because we set up screens for the information that people need to see. They don’t even need to go in and set up a screen every time; they can just have a snapshot of the dashboard. That’s been really popular.”
Funding from the project has come out of the general funding given by the Department of Health to the NIHR CRN co-ordinating centre, which is hosted at Leeds University.
Improving the health and wealth of the UK
Linking datasets together gives users the ability to interrogate multiple sets of information at once, rather than having to manually copy lots of data into spreadsheets. At its simplest level, Walsh explained, even with just the current two datasets live, people can now easily find a study, where it is, how many patients are involved and how long it took to get permission.
She explained: “It’s important to us, because our mantra as an organisation is all about trying to improve the health and the wealth of the nation. We can show big pharma companies in, say America, that rather than them going to China, that there are sites here where it takes 20 days to get permissions. We’ve not been able to do before, because we haven’t been able to link those two sets of data together.
Another example would be using the Open Data Platform to show where trained diabetes nurses are based – this information can be used to recommend the most appropriate location for running effective diabetes research in the NHS.
The team is currently developing an app centre, aimed at making it easy for patients interesting in clinical trials, and those already participating, to find all the information they need. Walsh said: “They might look on Google and probably find UK Clinical Trials Gateway, and there’s TrialReach, and others – we want to put them all in one place. It will be a like a research hub or an innovation hub where they can access all this information.
“But the same will go for a researcher, who will have this suite of tools available to aid their research, which will again sit on the QlikView open data platform. We’ll have a heat map to allow you to identify places with a high prevalence of patients with a particular disease, for example. We’ll have another map where you can scroll over the country and visibly see where studies are taking place. This will put us up there as one of the best countries in the world in which to carry out research,” Walsh concluded.
‘Turning data into information that enables insight’
This is what Richard Corbridge, CIO at the NIHR Clinical Research Network, had to say about the ODP: “Like any other government department at the moment, the NHS is being tasked with running at maximum efficiency and the clinical research environment is no exception.
“We have a lot of study information: the number of people taking part, where patient populations are located, how long study set-up takes, etc. and it makes sense to channel this data for enhanced performance management. Our new ‘Open Data Platform’ from QlikView has already helped us to make discoveries around the way our research is managed, so we can run trials in the most effective fashion.
“We’re so pleased with the results so far that we’re using them to set an example for similar organisations. Crucially, it is helping us turn data into information that enables insight and delivers business intelligence.”