Using InstantAtlas, Diabetes UK presents information online such as local service provision and regional and national service performance made available from survey information. The ease with which users can analyse the statistics and the power of eye-catching graphics is helping the charity provide better support for people with diabetes and to campaign for improved local care and support services to meet with national service framework targets.

Diabetes UK is the largest organisation in the UK working for people with diabetes, funding research, campaigning and helping people live with the condition. There are an estimated 2.35 million people with diabetes in England. This is predicted to grow to more than 2.5 million by 2010 - 9% of which will be due to an increase in obesity.

The charity’s stated mission is “to improve the lives of people with diabetes and to work towards a future without diabetes.” Two central areas of its work supporting this mission are campaigning and information provision.

Monitoring localities

Information on diabetes would be quite distributed and difficult to locate were it not for Diabetes UK. In pursuit of its mission, the charity aims to provide a central source of information on service provision and entitlements. Its key audiences are people with diabetes, carers, healthcare professionals, Primary Care Organisations (PCOs), its campaign network and staff.

Diabetes UK compares information at primary care organisation level from a variety of sources against Department of Health (DoH) National Service Framework targets. This provides essential campaign intelligence to the charity enabling it to lobby for national and regional improvements where it observes service provision to be below target and where inequalities in access to services are identified.

State of the nation

Until recently, the charity provided this information in the form of a printed annual state of the nation report and other static documents.

Diabetes UK recognised that users would be better served if information could be provided in a more timely manner. It also felt that a better service could be provided by enabling users to access information directly themselves and customise their searches to their own interests; a process which would then also reduce the demand for support placed on campaigners and staff. Solving these needs would speed the charity’s progress toward fulfilling its mission.

“Wanting to make information and analyses more accessible, we decided to investigate making everything available online, as a ‘one-stop-shop’ on diabetes,” said Charlotte Gosden, information analyst at Diabetes UK. “We also wanted a way to present statistical information clearly. We wanted to show trends and regional comparisons as graphics to reveal the intelligence hidden in the statistics and make underperformance obvious.”

InfoBank on InstantAtlas

After evaluating various software packages and custom-build services, in January 2007, Diabetes UK launched InfoBank using InstantAtlas, a software tool from GeoWise enabling users to collate data from multiple sources and create and publish online sophisticated area profiles, spatial dashboards and custom tables, maps and charts.

“InstantAtlas enables us to collate data from multiple sources and in disparate formats and then present it by locality, in a single format,” said Gosden. “Users can view up-to-date information on service provision and see how far their local service has met the standards more easily than when we produced printed reports.”

Statistics on service provision are presented via eye-catching graphics which make local, regional and national performance differences stand out and comparisons with National Service Framework targets easy to observe.

Powerful communications

Using InstantAtlas interactive flash based reports, Diabetes UK can demonstrate easily and quite clearly that some regions are better at providing a service such as eye screening or education, than others. In the future it will also highlight whether people of say, specific age groups, ethnicity, or gender are missing out in certain localities.

“The powerful visuals in InstantAtlas enable us to communicate the issues clearly with all our audiences,” said Gosden. “We can analyse local service provision versus targets and easily graph these to make our lobbying assertive and more effective. People with diabetes can also quickly see how their locality is performing.”

Data on expected prevalence can be compared with actual diagnosis rates. “Where diagnosis is a significantly below expectations, we can campaign for increased screening in a region,” said Gosden.

As part of its campaigning, Diabetes UK also advocates the use of InfoBank for commissioners of health care so they can see the evidence for themselves. “Via InstantAtlas, InfoBank shows primary care organisations exactly how their levels of care compare with targets, helping them plan and deliver future services,” said Gosden.

Happy customer

With the data now online, workload on Charlotte’s team has significantly reduced, since callers can often be referred to InfoBank. Users too have welcomed being able to run analyses easily and intuitively online.

Has InstantAtlas made a difference at Diabetes UK? Staff at the charity are very certain indeed that it has.

“InstantAtlas is a communications tool that is truly supporting us in our mission to improve the lives of people with diabetes,” concluded Gosden. “Our management, press communications and campaign teams think InstantAtlas is fantastic!”.

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