New insights platform to target health innovation to those most in need
The platform brings together publicly available health and deprivation data across three Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) – North Central London, North East London and Mid & South Essex.
It paints a picture of the health and wellbeing of five million people living from North London to the Essex coast. For example, the data show a striking variation in numbers of people living with coronary heart disease (CHD) across the region, with much higher rates in Mid and South Essex than in North Central and North East London. It also highlights cancer as the most common cause of mortality, but with wide variation in the incidence rate across the region. Five boroughs in our region are well above the national incidence rate, and others at less than half.
The platform also provides insights into the demographics of our region to inform how to effectively engage with communities. A little under 20% of the population in our region do not speak English as their main language. This varies hugely between boroughs, with 34% of people speaking languages other than English as their main language in Tower Hamlets, compared to just 1% in Maldon, Essex.
Sarah Mansuralli, Chief Development and Population Health Officer, North Central London Integrated Care Board, said: “North Central London ICS welcomes this new platform which will enrich the insights that we can use to tackle our biggest health challenges from a strong evidence base. We are focussed on being a learning system and using intelligence to drive improvement is at the heart of our approach. Our mission is to deliver equitable access, experience and outcomes for our population, putting more emphasis on prevention, early intervention and proactive care. The platform is a key tool to help us achieve that ambition.”
Health, care and other public services collect and publish huge amounts of data, but more can be done to translate it into actionable insights for leaders and improvers. Our insights platform aims to:
- Provide an easy, accessible route to understand population data for our three ICSs, enabling our health and care partners, and indeed anyone who is interested, to ascertain what health challenges the people living in our communities are facing and needing help with;
- Create an engaging tool to publicly monitor and measure the impact of our work to solve major health challenges through our new five-year strategy; and
- Provide a means to share and contribute learning within our communities.
Kate Cheema, Director of Evaluation and Insights at UCLPartners said: “To be truly successful in identifying the most effective interventions and targeting them where they are needed most, we need to know and understand the populations we serve. Our new insights platform is a significant step in achieving this. It will help us to translate available data into actionable insights so, we can build a transparent picture of how we are delivering impact over time. Our mission is to help five million people from North London to the Essex coast live longer, healthier lives – we believe our new insights platform will help us to do exactly this.”
We plan to evolve our insights platform over time in response to user feedback and as we refine our evaluation and measurement framework to align with our five-year strategy.