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Articles and Blog Posts

Interview with a Data Scientist - The Epidemiologist Who Wasn’t “Good at Maths”

Welcome to another instalment of our “Interview with a Data Scientist” series, where we explore the careers and work of the talented data scientists across our healthcare organisations. We aim to showcase the fantastic individuals who contribute to Data Science within the healthcare sector and provide valuable insights for those considering a career in this field.

Today we’re interviewing Jamie Wong, a postdoctoral researcher at University College London and former NHS England Data Science Officer.

Reflections from school outreach at Carlton Keighley

Two of our data scientists, Liz Kelly and Amaia Imaz Blanco, recently spent a Wednesday morning doing speed networking with year 8 and year 10 students at Carlton Keighley organised by @Ahead Partnerships. In our team, outreach like this is incredibly important, and Liz's write-up of her experience is a great reminder of why.

Can AI Write Clinical Notes?

Yes it can – and it can do a remarkably good job!

This article explores our recent work creating synthetic patient pathways, with corresponding clinical notes at every step of the journey. Developed alongside clinicians, these notes could help the development of the next generation of healthcare AI tools. Our full pipeline is available on GitHub.

Interview with a Data Scientist - The Fairness Enthusiast

Today we’re interviewing Konstantin Georgiev, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascular Research and former NHS England Data Science Officer. Konstantin’s journey from software engineering in Bulgaria to using multimodal AI for cardiac diagnostics in NHS Scotland offers fascinating insights into the intersection of deep learning, fairness in AI, and real-world healthcare impact.

Interview with a Data Scientist - The RAP Guy

This week our interviewee is Sam Hollings, who is departing NHS England after a seven-year career. In his most recent role as Head of Coding and Data Standards (and formerly as Principal Data Scientist), Sam was a driving force for improving data practices across the organisation. He is widely known for his passionate championing of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP). As he prepares for a new chapter in Italy with his family, he kindly agreed to share his reflections and the lessons learned from his work.

This interview orginally was published in the October edition of the Data Science Community for Health and Care Newsletter. You can subscribe and join the community here.

🌱 NHSE Data Science and Applied AI Team Gets Hands Dirty Volunteering at Seacroft Forest Garden 🌱

At NHS England, employees get a handful of days each year to volunteer - helping out with causes that align with key NHS goals like helping people live healthier lives, improving quality of life, supporting recovery, and promoting equality in health.

The Data Science and Applied AI team recently grabbed this opportunity to give back, with a day spent volunteering at Seacroft Forest Garden, organised by the Wellbeing and Inclusion Function Team.

Interview with a Data Scientist - The Data Scientist Who Just Wanted to Make Plots

Welcome to another insightful installment of our "Interview with a Data Scientist" series. Here, we delve into the diverse career paths and impactful work of the talented individuals who make up the NHS England Data Science team. Our goal is to shine a light on the fantastic people driving the NHS Data Science Profession forward and to offer valuable perspectives for anyone considering a career in healthcare data science.

This week our interviewee is Amaia Imaz Blanco, a Data Scientist in the Data Science Team whose love of making graphs led her to the NHS Digital Graduate Scheme and eventually into probabilistic data linkage!

HSMA Course Project: Waiting List Data Science Proofs of Concept

Sean and Amaia have spent the last 15 months on the Health Service Modelling Associates (HSMA) Programme, which is soon coming to an end. This program consists of 6 months of weekly lectures on a range of data science, operational research, coding, and web development, followed by a 9 month project, run by the University of Exeter PenChord team and is available for free for anyone working in public healthcare or policing.

During the course, we opted for the project to be a set of proof of concepts using the Waiting List Minimum Data set (WLMDS) to identify data science techniques that may provide novel insights into this dataset. Read more about the project itself here. This blog post is a summary of our project, as well a reflection on the past 15 months of the course.