Introduction
Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley works with partners in the NHS, research and industry to identify, develop and spread innovation that will benefit patients, services, populations and economies. It is one of the nine Health Innovation Networks (HINs) across England delivering the polypharmacy programme. When in discussions about the programme, local system leaders ask the HINs to have a more in-depth approach to health inequalities, ensuring the polypharmacy work is targeted at the populations with the greatest levels of deprivation.
Since 2021, Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley has commissioned Unity Insights to develop a number of health inequalities dashboards for their key health and care priorities. These dashboards overlay regional deprivation data (using the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) dataset) and other health inequalities indicators alongside relevant datasets pertaining to the workstream (i.e. maps including IMD data and respiratory hospital admissions to identify patterns and pockets of greater need). In late 2023, this suite of dashboards was extended to include a polypharmacy-specific set of visualisations.
Impact of the work
The polypharmacy dashboard utilises prescribing data (ePACT2), IMD data, Census data, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and primary care patient registration data. It includes primary care and secondary care visualisations, with a number of clinical indicators selected by the polypharmacy team.
It is used by Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley, the local ICB medicines optimisation leads and clinical pharmacists to drive better care in the region. It provides valuable insights for clinicians and commissioners to ensure health equity is embedded in the implementation of the programme.
Get in touch with us
- Phone
- Email enquiries@unityinsights.co.uk