InstantAtlas Public Health Case Study
Sheffield PCT gets the message across with InstantAtlas
Finding that its audience for public health data had little appetite for multiple spreadsheets of complex statistics, Sheffield PCT now uses InstantAtlas to present online the Sheffield Health and Wellbeing Atlas. An interactive flash based graphical resource, it has contributed to their 2006 public health report winning an award from the Association of Directors of Public Health.
Under the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), some 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) hold responsibility for providing health and social care locally to make sure community needs are being met. Their budget for the financial year 2006/7 was some £5.4 billion , around 80% of the NHS budget.
The Sheffield Primary Care Trust (PCT) was formed on 1st October 2006, following the merger of North Sheffield PCT, South East Sheffield PCT, Sheffield South West PCT and Sheffield West PCT.
Public health statistics
As part of its remit to engage with the local population to improve its health and wellbeing, Sheffield PCT, like all PCTs, has a duty to make its local health statistics available to policy makers, health professionals, local government agencies and the public.
“In previous years, we provided online access to spreadsheets of figures. Key departments in public agencies and within the PCT were also provided with various analyses and graphs to meet their standard needs,” said Tamsin Jones, of the public health analysis team at Sheffield PCT. “But we received frequent ad-hoc requests for data and analyses additional to those provided. It took us time to deliver this additional information.”
She continued: “Busy decision makers looking to take actions and the public want easy access to information. Mostly our audiences don’t want to scour spreadsheets for relevant data, then construct statistical analyses and graphs themselves.”
InstantAtlas
Looking for a solution to its need to communicate local health indicators more clearly, Sheffield PCT chose to review InstantAtlas, a software tool from GeoWise which enables the graphical presentation of geographic and statistical data so that regional and local patterns become easy to see and explore.
Using InstantAtlas, in February 2007 Sheffield PCT published the Sheffield Health and Wellbeing Atlas online. It displays data at different geographic levels across the city and allows interactive interrogation. The levels currently available are the city’s 100 Neighbourhoods, and seven Service Districts. The atlas is constantly updated as new data become available.
Data is grouped under the headings of births, dental health, deprivation, disease groups, education, environment, housing, life expectancy, mortality, and population. Data is available for several years allowing time trend analysis. The Atlas contains themed maps, data tables, trend tables, graphs covering all of these areas, details of data sources and data notes. There is also a detailed user guide.
Public health report
(1) Before repayment of the 2005-2006 overspend.
Sheffield’s Director of Public Health Report for 2006 presents numerous links to the atlas to help illustrate key points. Jeremy Wight is Director of Public Health, Sheffield. He said: “Throughout the Sheffield Director of Public Health Report for 2006, the Sheffield Health and Wellbeing Atlas is now accessible, which presents a huge amount of health data in a way we’ve not been able to do before. If you want to know about health in your neighbourhood, this is the place to look”
Better service
InstantAtlas now allows people to easily access Sheffield’s health data. Users can interact with it intuitively to define precisely the statistics and comparisons they want. They can view the results as colourful eye-catching atlases, profiles, dashboards, performance reports and other graphics; aiding understanding. Users can also perform custom trend analyses, a service Sheffield didn’t comprehensively offer before. And of course information can be called up almost instantly, rather than ad-hoc requests taking hours or days to process as they did before when fulfilled manually.
“InstantAtlas is helping us get health messages across through visual communications rather than rows of numbers. This saves our audiences time and makes the data much more stimulating and easier to understand,” said Jones. “We can add commentary to presentations to assist interpretation too.”
More efficient
As well as the key added-value of improving information accessibility, adopting InstantAtlas to enable self-service has additionally presented efficiency gains. “InstantAtlas reduces our need to manually service health data requests, saving us several hours a week,” explained Jones. ”I would estimate that we give around three days a year to manually uploading new data to InstantAtlas, so as well as improving our information service, there is a clear net efficiency improvement.”
Positive feedback….and an award!
Other PCTs have taken quite an interest in the Sheffield Health and Wellbeing Atlas and have met the PCT to learn about the processes and tools behind it. Public health professionals working with community groups have expressed their commendations too and various local health agencies offer web links to the atlas.
The atlas has also contributed to a prestigious public health award for Sheffield PCT.
“The Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) praised us for our innovative approach to our 2006 public health report, especially its accessibility using interactive multi-media such as InstantAtlas,” said Jones. “We won first prize in the ADPH annual competition for the best PCT report!”
Public Health Reporting Showcase
http://www.sheffieldpct.nhs.uk/
http://www.publichealthsheffield2006.nhs.uk/
http://www.publichealthsheffield2006.nhs.uk/atlas/index.php
Sheffield PCT Case Study in PDF Format
Case Study Keywords - health data, public health data, information accessibility, performance reports, dashboards, profiles, interactive flash atlas, health statistics
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