On 14 January 2025, the first Big Data event of the year took place with record-breaking engagement—177 attendees joined the live call. This seventh event in the series was hosted by the Big Data Team: a partnership between the Advanced Analytics team in the National Data Resource (NDR) programme and Life Sciences Hub Wales (LSHW). The theme kicking off the new year was Big Data: Bigger Picture.
The event opened with a warm welcome from Ifan Evans, Director of Digital Strategy at Digital Health and Care Wales. He outlined the significance of data in enabling actionable change and highlighted the role of the NDR in building a unified data architecture for health and care in Wales. This ambitious 10-year programme, launched in 2019, has already achieved milestones such as deploying the Care Data Repository and National Data and Analytics Platform in August 2023. Future phases focus on integrating patient records and advancing analytics to drive service transformation.
Event highlights:
- Record participation: The event set a new benchmark for attendance and engagement, reflecting the growing importance of data in health and care transformation.
- Focus on actionable change: Discussions centred on transforming data insights into real-world improvements, emphasising tools and techniques for impactful health innovations.
- Collaborative initiatives: Sarah Blundell and Alex Cheung of NHS England’s Analyst X community showcased their work to professionalise data roles and promote collaboration among over 18,000 members. Their efforts resonate with ongoing initiatives in Wales, such as the Wales Modelling Collaborative (WMC) or the Analytics Learning programme (ALP), both of which foster shared learning and building expertise to address complex health challenges.
- Innovative demonstrations: Lloyd Bishop from Aneurin Bevan University Health Board presented a compelling demonstration of modelling capabilities in NDAP, including the ability to ask conversational prompts and access AI generated insights to better understand patient flow data such as bed usage, and improve service planning.
The date of the next Big Data event will be announced soon. Additionally, the next NDR stakeholder update will take place on 13 February 2025.
We'd love to hear your feedback if you attended Big Data Bigger Picture, or if you have suggestions for how to expand on or improve future events. Contact us at NDR.comms@wales.nhs.uk.
