We provide actionable insight through data science and advanced analytics. We do this using collaboration, innovation and experimentation.
We work across the NHSBSA, and with external organisations such as NHS England, to provide new insights from data that improve patient and customer outcomes and reduce loss in the system.
Recent projects
Experimental Analysis: Prescription Prepayment Certificate (PPC) savings and potential beneficiaries
Publication date: 25 March 2025
Our new exploratory analysis report estimates potential patient savings achieved from using PPCs and Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) PPCs.
We also provide estimates of savings that eligible patients could have made, had they purchased a PPC. Insights are based on experimental methodologies.
Insights are provided at a national and local Integrated Care System (ICS) level, showing trends over time and variation. The insights can help to inform policies, planning, and promotion of services locally and nationally. They may be particularly useful to ICSs, local authorities and charities.
Gender pay gap report
Publication date: 24 March 2025
Organisations with 250 or more employees are required by the government to report annually on their gender pay gap.
The 2023-24 gender pay gap report provides information on workforce gender composition, pay by grade and directorate, and the proportion of men and women across pay quartiles. It outlines the organisation’s approach to calculating the gender pay gap, based on government methodology, and details ongoing initiatives to support diversity, inclusion, and workforce development.
The report also highlights actions taken over the past year and future plans to continue progress. You can find reports for previous years on the NHSBSA gender pay gap reports webpage.
Healthcare inequalities – NHS Prescribing of Hormone Replacement Therapy to treat symptoms of the Menopause
Publication date: 18 October 2024
The Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) inequalities article provides insight into NHS primary care prescribing of HRT to treat symptoms of the menopause in women aged 40 years and over.
You can explore insights by age, deprivation, region, Integrated Care System (ICS), Primary Care Network (PCN), Local Authority, Electoral Ward and Core20.
These insights improve our understanding of the inequalities that exist in HRT prescribing. They can be used to inform a wider action plan for inequalities in women's health nationally. The insights can also be used locally by local authorities, ICSs and policy makers to help inform policies, planning, commissioning and promotion of services.
Prescribing patterns for care home patients
Publication date: 17 December 2024
Our team have looked at estimated prescribing patterns for care home patients aged 65 and over from 2020-21 to 2023-24.
As insight into care home prescribing has previously been a key gap in knowledge, our team carried out experimental linkage work to identify older care home patients aged 65 and over in our NHS Prescriptions data. They used sophisticated methodology which includes linking primary care prescription address data to care home addresses in AddressBase Plus and CQC data.
Now in its third year, the work builds upon our 2020-2021 and 2022-23 analysis, adding an additional year’s worth of data, additional prescribing metrics and revised charts and analyses.
We have published a full open source insight report and detailed methodology. All supporting code is available on GitHub. We have also created an R package for others to use when matching addresses.
Data Professional roles in the NHS: the NCF’s quest for standardisation
Publication date: 1 March 2024
This blog on the NHSBSA Data Analytics Github explores how NHS Jobs data could be used to gauge how similar data professional roles are based on the technical skills requested. Knowing how similar these positions are across the NHS could help to guide and complement initiatives such as the National Competency Framework (NCF) and maximise their impact on the workforce.
The team have used text matching approaches and high dimensional scaling to compare the 1,700 data professional roles advertised across the NHS during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years. The code has been published publicly on Github together with the blog.
Child Health Insights: take up of NHS Dental, NHS Prescribing and supporting schemes
Publication date: 8 September 2023
The Child Health Insights report takes a closer look at NHS prescribing and NHS Dental treatments amongst children in England. It also provides insights into take up of maternity exemption certificates and the NHS Healthy Start scheme.
These insights support the Core20PLUS5 approach to reducing healthcare inequalities. They can be used by local authorities, Integrated Care Boards and policy makers to support targeted actions to improve outcomes for children at both national and local level.
Healthcare inequalities: access to NHS prescribing and exemption schemes in England
Publication date: 11 January 2023
Working with NHS England, the NHSBSA Data Science team have explored uptake of NHS exemption schemes and prescribing patterns in England in deprived and other under-served communities in the Core20PLUS populations. The team have provided actionable insights with a focus on three clinical areas of prescribing - chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), hypertension, and severe mental illness (SMI).
You can view the healthcare inequalities report online.
Take up of the NHS Low Income Scheme in England
Publication date: 9 August 2024
Using a combination of analytics, user research and customer survey data, the team explored whether the NHS Low Income Scheme in England reaches its intended audience and meets user needs. You can view a public version of the report.
The team used a cutting edge reporting approach which they describe in the NHS-R Community blog, together with code on GitHub. They have also created a template for building NHSBSA branded R Shiny dashboards.