HSMA Project Handbook - Projects by Methods

Emergency Departments

The Effect of Booked Appointments on Waiting Times at Urgent Treatment Centres

The aim of the project was to examine in more detail the question of whether booked appointment times might reduce waiting times in Urgent Treatment Centres (UTC). This was…

Alice Waterhouse

Using DES to Improve Flow through an Acute Medicine Assessment Pathway

Nottingham University Hosptials has two major Acute Medicine Assessment areas (WB3 and AMRA), where patients can be reviewed before being sent to the most appropriate…

Helen Young, Thomas Knight

Discrete Event Simulation to Improve Flow and Performance in the Urgent Treatment Centre

The primary aim of the project was to improve Urgent Treatment Care (UTC) performance by developing a model which would help the Emergency Department (ED) team with the…

Shilpa Patel

Forecasting Demand and Length of Stay in the Emergency Department

The project aimed to use forecasting and machine learning methods to predict the length of stay and arrivals to the Emergency Department (ED) at different times of day, days…

Lisa Sabir

Meeting the demand of 111 for primary care services

This was an attempt to model the impact of enforcing timely primary care interventions when 111 calls are undertaken.

Richard Pilbery, Maddie Smith, Jon Green

Using Discrete Event Simulation to model the bottlenecks in the Acute Medical Unit pathway

The team’s project was to create a computer model of part of the acute medical pathway in their hospital trust. As part of this process patients come in with non-surgical…

Becky Crofts, Kayleigh Haydock

Network Analysis of diagnostic procedures in A&E setting

In A&E a patient can be given one or more diagnostic procedures. These can be as simple as the various blood test or more complicated procedures like an MRI test. The aim of…

Hamzah Shami

Mental Health

Use of Discrete Event Simulation to Tackle Long Waits and a Growing Backlog for Children Requiring Neuro Development Assessment (Autism and ADHD)

The aim of the project was to understand the current pathway to assessment of Autism and ADHD in children, identifying any bottlenecks. We wanted to know what change needed…

Irma Tanovic

Discrete Event Simulation of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Pathway in an IAPT Service

The aim of the project was to use Discrete Event Simulation (DES) to model the current wait list for High Intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (HI-CBT). The team wanted…

Katie Brown, Hannah Carroll, Andrew Poole, Matthew Chapman

Predicting Violent Incidents on Mental Health Inpatient Units

The aim of the project was to see if the occurrence of violent incidents on hospital wards could be reduced, if incidents could be pre-empted and interventions could be…

Iain Waring

Elective Surgery

Modelling strategies to reduce the elective backlog in hip surgery

This project used Discrete Event Simulation to model the hip surgery patient pathway in Exeter to understand the potential impact of various strategies to reduce the backlog…

Claire Rudler, Matt Smith, Imca Hensels-Pelling, Zoe Ficken

Discrete Event Simulation to model elective surgery pathways

The aim of the project was to create a Discrete Event Simulation in SimPy to model elective surgery pathways, which could be used to model changes to a pathway and their…

Dominic Allen

Primary Care and 111

Exploring the use of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to teach a machine to predict whether a patient is likely to be imminently admitted to hospital based on GP data and clues in GP notes

This exploratory project explored the use of Natural Language Processing methods to automate the extraction of key information from free-text patient notes in order to…

Dr Adam Kwiatkowski, Prof Mona Nasser, Imca Hensels-Pelling

Meeting the demand of 111 for primary care services

This was an attempt to model the impact of enforcing timely primary care interventions when 111 calls are undertaken.

Richard Pilbery, Maddie Smith, Jon Green

Workforce

Investigating factors impacting NHS workforce retention

Marie Rogers, Richard Pilbery

Vaccination

Developing a generic vaccination service model for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

In winter 2020, vaccinations had recently been approved for use in the UK to protect people against the COVID-19 virus. Consequently, a mass vaccination programme was…

Dr Adam Kwiatkowski

South East Regional Covid 19 Vaccination Demand & Capacity Modelling

The aim of the project was to create an easy to use model for predicting demand and capacity for Covid vaccinations.

Charlene Black, Adonis Sithole, Edward Chick, Mayoor Dhokia

Inequalities

Developing a Service Planning Decision Support Tool to Tackle Inequalities and Minimise Carbon Output

There are three current significant health agendas to which this project broadly relates.

Matt Eves, Anya Gopfert, Sally Brown

Creating a tool to automatically generate health equity audits for Community Diagnostic Centres

Community diagnostic centres (CDCs) have been launched across England to tackle the diagnostic backlog and address healthcare inequalities. CDCs and commissioners struggle…

Sarah Houston, Deborah Newton

Developing a tool to assess inequalities and demographic coverage of service locations

This project hopes to empower NHS service providers with a tool that grants a deeper understanding of the population they serve and allows them to direct future service…

Alex Owens, Phoebe Woodhead, Sian Heath

Using Machine Learning to estimate inequities in access to hospital procedures

The aim of this project was to determine on an ICB, LTLA and UTLA the overall level of disparity in accessing planned appointments in hospital. The team did this for each…

Benjamin Mouncer

Public Health

Understanding Excess Mortality in Dorset

The project was based on the Dorset ICS (Integrated Care Systems) Health Inequalities programme aim to improve access, enhance the experience of services for everyone.…

Eleanor Jeram, Lee Robertson, Wilson Otitonaiye

Police

What are they saying about us? An AI tool to determine the sentiment of tweets to police forces across the country, and what people are talking about

This project used AI-based Natural Language Processing methods to develop a dashboard that predicts the sentiment (positive or negative) of every tweet to every police force…

Mike Hill

Generating a richer understanding of relationships in crime data in order to identify opportunities to safeguard individuals and families

This project used Network Analysis methods to identify the social relationships between groups of people who could be causing significant issues within their communities…

Jenna Thomas, Charly Bartlett, Neil Mitchell

Spatial Modelling of Violent Crime to Support Strategic Analysis

The aim of this project was to use various crime data variables and spatial analysis to turn them into useful insights for inclusion in assessed intelligence reporting.

Anupma Wadhera, Linda Wystemp, Andrea Casajuana Massanet, Helen Browne, Alessia Rose

Using Natural Language Processing to detect drug related content within free text

Since the amount of data being collected and stored has increased significantly, datasets are often reviewed manually, particularly when free text fields are present. This…

Lauren Szarvas, Holly Dale, Tom Haddock

Service Areas

Rheumatology

The role of Patient Initiated Follow-up (PIFU) and ‘Digital Outpatients’ in Supporting the Elective Recovery - Can We Better Size Potential for Clearing the Backlog?

The aim of the project is to find out what role Patient Initiated Follow-up (PIFU) can play in the redeployment of capacity to address the backlog. This will be done by…

Martina Fonseca, Xiaochen Ge

A Discrete Event Simulation Model to reduce Rheumatology waiting times in Dorset

The current Referral to Treatment waiting list is at its highest level in NHS history. Identifying methods for reducing the waiting list and waiting times would benefit…

Abby Dewhurst, Claire Davies, Krzysztof Cepa

Neonatal

Modelling the location of neonatal critical care units in North West England

Duncan Galletly

Respiratory

Using Machine Learning to Predict Hospital Admissions and Length of Stay for Respiratory Conditions

The aim of the project was to use available Primary and Secondary Care patient history and demographic information to better predict the chance of admission for respiratory…

Andy McCann

Paediatric

Simulation modelling to test proposed models of pediatric critical care in South West England

This project used a combination of Discrete Event Simulation and Geographic Modelling approaches to determine where Level 2 Pediatric Critical Care Units should be located…

Adam Scull

Forecasting Demand and Length of Stay in the Emergency Department

The project aimed to use forecasting and machine learning methods to predict the length of stay and arrivals to the Emergency Department (ED) at different times of day, days…

Lisa Sabir

Cancer

Use Of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) to reduce delays in Cancer Diagnosis & Treatment

The project aim was to develop a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model based on Colorectal Cancer pathway at Gloucester Royal Hospital to identify the key delays within the…

Angel Masih, James Page, Mahya Kaveh

Cardiac

Reducing Travel Times to Treatment for Cardiac Patients in the South East of England

The aim of the project was to employ geographical and statistical analysis of past and present travel times to understand the impact the flow of activity into London has on…

Glenn Ubly, Atonia Drummond, Janine James, Victor Yu

Orthopaedics

Modelling strategies to reduce the elective backlog in hip surgery

This project used Discrete Event Simulation to model the hip surgery patient pathway in Exeter to understand the potential impact of various strategies to reduce the backlog…

Claire Rudler, Matt Smith, Imca Hensels-Pelling, Zoe Ficken