Athena Rapid Evaluation

New and improved health interventions are constantly being developed and delivered to improve patient care, experience and outcomes. We need to rapidly understand the impact of these interventions – at an individual, cohort and system level – to inform future planning and investment decisions.

Arden & GEM‘s strategic data and analytics platform, Athena, includes a tool which enables those working in or with primary care to quickly and simply evaluate the impact of an intervention using our analysis-ready linked data model.

Athena Rapid Evaluation brings together two statistical methods. The first is ‘propensity score matching’ which is used to create a fair comparison group of people who are very similar to those receiving the intervention. The second is the ‘differences-in differences’ technique which looks at how healthcare use has changed, for both the patient cohort and the comparator group, before and after the intervention. As well as showing changes in A&E attendances, emergency admissions and primary care appointments, the evaluation report also shows the cost implications of these changes.

Athena Rapid Evaluation enables:

• Clinical and operational managers to evaluate the impact of any intervention delivered to patients within as little as thirty minutes
• The impact of delivery on activity and finances to be better understood
• Resources to be invested in those interventions with the greatest impact and offering the best value
• Decisions to be aligned to the Triple Aim duty
• Use of state-of-the-art research techniques and methods so that the evidence base for interventions and programmes is constantly updated.