DIGITAL DICTATION, DOCUMENTS & DATA
Clear visibility
Dave Marsden, director for information and IT services at the Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit, explains how a new data visualisation tool is helping commissioners and analysts to make decisions and forecasts.
rolling out new data visualisation software, which has been integrated into its existing information, management and analysis platform – known as GEMIMA.
G
The tool allows easy contrasting of performance and resource management at a national and local level, accurate reviewing of activity levels and cost against plans, and improved potential for identifying problems, exploring scenarios and sharing best practice.
The CSU is using software from Tableau to achieve these new benefits for the 20 CCGs it serves, with a population of about five million people.
Dave Marsden, the CSU’s IT director, told NHE: “It is a fundamental step change in the way we provide information, both for ourselves – for the analysts who provide services to the CCGs, that is – and, increasingly importantly, for direct access to information for key staff within CCGs.
“To be able to take that information and model it and explore it is a significant development of our capabilities.”
The GEMIMA platform is all about collecting and collating the information that commissioners need – while the new software makes that information easy to visualise, interrogate and work with.
The CSU worked on the procurement throughout summer 2013, then delivered it over a six-month period. That involved putting the technical platform into place, training its own developers, and some re-engineering of its underlying platforms.
The secure, web-based tool quickly proved popular, with 1,000 hits in its first hour, and 2,000 over the following week. The first application, from June, provided a visualisation and presentation layer for GEMIMA’s Significant Contract Management Module, and more phases of the implementation have been rolled out since.
reater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (GEM CSU) recently began
“There’s been a lot of interest and a lot of enthusiasm,” Marsden said. “There’s an evolutionary element to it: as people become confident with it and talk to others, others will be drawn into the system to make use of it as well.
“One piece of feedback that came to one of our developers on the day after we went live said: ‘This is the tool we have been waiting for; thank you for this, it will make a big difference’.”
The data
GEMIMA makes use of national SUS (secondary uses service) pseudonymised data from the Health & Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). The CSU is one of the accredited DSCROs (Data Services for Commissioning Regional Offices), licensed to use the SUS data and make it available to CCGs after processing and analysis.
Marsden explained: “The visualisation and exploration tools mean our CCGs, without coming back to us, can drill into that information and compare it to others in terms of benchmarking. Then, when they’re happy with the snapshot, they are able to export it for their own further manipulation or for their own purposes in reports.
“It’s a very intuitive system, so we encourage people to log on and explore – and we run a series of webinars for people who aren’t confident doing that. You don’t need detailed documentation in order to make use of the system.”
For anyone wanting to use the most advanced features, Marsden said, extra information is available.
The quality of the data coming in from providers has been steadily improving too, he told NHE, as can be seen when comparing and reconciling SUS data (via the HSCIC) and the SLAM data (service level agreement monitoring data, directly from the providers).
“We have a strategic relationship with about 16 of the big providers in our area and we’re
He said: “They run some development workshops and we’re putting a second tranche of people through those in order that they become comfortable. You have to get it and use it to understand its potential, and that’s where we’re at – ready to go with the second wave.
“We’ve got to base camp with it now and it’s got huge potential moving forward. The team at Tableau know they’ve got a good tool and they want to sell it to more organisations, and I don’t think there’s any shame in that.”
James Eiloart from the software company said: “Data is only really useful if you can extract meaning and insight from it. GEM is making it simple and fast for CGGs to make informed decisions, because they can see and understand the data with Tableau. It also helps provide a clear picture of what best practice looks like in terms of performance, value and patient care, which can then be replicated elsewhere – both within the GEM area and other CSUs across England.”
Marsden added: “We have a long list of developments from our CCG customers and we now feel we’re much better equipped to move forward rapidly with those developments – for example risk stratification, and a new DES (directed enhanced services) on unplanned admissions.
“We’re in a much better place to respond very quickly to the things they’re asking us to do. We’re infinitely more agile than we were previously.”
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK
opinion@nationalhealthexecutive.com
national health executive Sep/Oct 14 | 79
working on a programme of data quality and improvement where it’s needed,” Marsden said. “But it’s at a good level and that’s improving over time.”
Ready to go
Marsden praised the team at Tableau, calling them “extremely helpful in getting through some of the technical problems around establishing the platform, and making that available”.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104