Newcastle University > National Innovation Centre for Data > Case Studies > NHS Business Services Authority

The challenge

The NHS Business Authority is a Special Health Authority. It's an arm's length body of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

They provide a range of critical health services to:

• patients
• the public
• NHS organisations
• NHS employees

They have large volumes of NHS data that they wanted to derive value from. This included:

• primary care prescriptions
• NHS Pensions
• job applications
• European Health Insurance cards
• Help with Health Costs applications

Resolution

They worked with NICD on two business problems with primary care prescriptions data.

One project aimed to assess whether a particular policy was achieving intended outcomes. The other project built a model to report on variation in behaviour across a range of metrics.

NICD taught NHSBSA staff a range of approaches. These included collaborative coding and discussion, challenge and demonstration.

Solution

The NHS Business Services Authority learned:

• new programming skills
• analytical approaches
• when and how to use those approaches
• how to interpret the results 

They anticipate that the projects with NICD will lead to improved ways of working, behaviour change and savings for the NHS.