When Mid and South Essex Integrated Case System (ICS) identified a need for a system-wide, consolidated, collaborative data and analytics platform, Arden & GEM’s BI team was tasked with co-producing a solution.
Using agile methodology, the cloud-based solution was built and deployed in just five months, utilising a unique approach to data sharing and content creation. Athena has consolidated data, removed siloes, fostered a collaborative culture and is now directly supporting clinicians to deliver preventative, personalised care and improved outcomes for vulnerable patient groups.
The challenge
When Mid and South Essex (MSE) ICS was established in July 2022, it wanted to build a better understanding of its 1.2 million residents to tackle health inequalities, improve health and wellbeing, and reduce reliance on hospital care.
MSE ICS brought together GP practices, PCNs, district and borough councils, community and mental health providers, a multi-site hospital trust, ambulance trust, and voluntary and community sector associations. Providing a holistic view of the population and an end-to-end view of patient pathways – across this complex system infrastructure – was hampered by:
- Different partners using separate data sources/flows that often told different stories
- Siloed reporting systems and analysis which couldn’t always answer key questions
- Incredibly complex data sharing and information governance (IG).
These challenges were recognised in the system’s Business Intelligence Strategy, which identified the need for a system-wide, consolidated, collaborative data and analytics platform.
Our approach
As the ICS’s existing BI partner, NHS Arden & GEM was chosen to co-develop a data and analytics solution named Athena.
Engaging and involving stakeholders
Building a solution that would be fit for purpose, intuitive and robust required the right mix of roles, skills and representation across the ICS. Over 70 digital and data leads from system partners were invited to an initial ‘Data Summit’ to share information, discuss projects and priorities, and understand each other’s data and intelligence needs.
Collaborative working was then maintained through a monthly BI and Data Delivery Board, involving operational and digital leads from all providers, to support ongoing development and build understanding in how the platform could be used. During the development process regular presentations were delivered to system stakeholders to keep them informed of the project, its ethos and intended outputs.
Effective data sharing
Athena uses cloud-based technologies to bring separate data sources, flows and reporting together in one place creating a single source of the truth. Athena contains 12 billion rows of pseudonymised data from national and local data flows, including primary care, secondary care and social care.
Through an innovative approach to IG, organisations across the system can now access data and dashboards, including personal confidential data (PCD). A robust user access process – involving IG leads, Caldicott Guardians and SIROs across multiple organisations – has been established to ensure that those users delivering direct patient care are able to reidentify patients.
Analytical collaboration
A key principle of Athena’s design was enabling analysts from different organisations to publish content, regardless of the analytical tool used to create it. Training, guidance and processes have been put in place to ensure that content is high quality, consistent and non-repetitive.
Local teams have already co-published content to the platform in both Tableau and Power BI, complemented by a central team developing content relevant to all system partners.
Through this analytical collaboration, a total of 32 dashboards have been developed including:
- Population Health Management – segmenting and risk stratifying the population into distinct groups to identify differing health and wellbeing needs, as well as inequalities, enabling tailored care models
- Diabetes – highlighting the prevalence, risk factors and impact of diabetes within selected geographic areas
- Cancer – giving greater insight into service delivery and the patient pathway to improve patient experience and outcomes
- Recovery of planned care services – insights into current and projected bottlenecks in the planned care system.
The outcomes
Since its ‘go live’ in February 2023, Athena has enabled patient-facing services to be planned and delivered in a completely different way.
- Athena enables an integrated approach to patient care through a broader and richer population dataset
- Frequent users of health and care services are being identified earlier and collaborative interventions, such as community support from the third sector or social prescribing, deployed to prevent further use
- Descriptive and prescriptive analytics are being brought together so that decision makers can understand the potential impact of targeting a particular patient segment or introducing a new intervention.
The platform has already been used to support a strategic stewardship programme, looking at how resources are shifted around the MSE system to optimise the quality of care people receive, and track the impact of any changes made over time.
This included developing an assessment tool and care coordination system for people with frailty and dementia as part of the ‘Ageing Well’ stewardship group. This data-driven transformation project was recognised at the HSJ Awards 2023.
"Through the introduction of new dashboards and the creation of an analytics environment we now have the perfect set of tools to provide insight and enable evidence-based decision making with the aim of improving the health and wellbeing of local population, reducing inequalities, and addressing current and future needs."
Stephen Gallagher, Deputy Director of Data and Business Intelligence at Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board
Find out more about the Athena platform.