Health Data Research UK (HDRUK)

Health Data Research UK North (HDRUK North)

The Northern Better Care Partnership brings together world-class universities, including the University of Sheffield, digitally-enabled NHS institutions and Academic Health Science systems. It serves over 16 million people in the North which has higher rates of poverty, morbidity, premature mortality and poorer clinical outcomes than other regions.

Coordinating Organisation

The University of Liverpool

Associate Organisations

• Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
• Lancaster University
• The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
• University of Leeds
• Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Trust
• University of Manchester
• Northern Health Science Alliance
• Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts
• Newcastle University
• Salford Royal Foundation Trust
• University of Sheffield
• South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Integrated Care System
• Wirral University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Health Data Research UK North (HDRUK North) Projects

The Partnership will initially deliver three projects with a focus on better care for elderly people living with frailty. Each project will employ extensive, available data and advanced analytical techniques to gain actionable insights for optimising delivery of care.

1. Learning Care Homes: Continuous improvement of structured referrals
2. Better antibiotic prescribing in frail elderly people with polypharmacy 
3. Development of a learning system to optimise anticholinergic medication prescribing for older people living with frailty 

The University of Sheffield are currently involved in the Learning Care Homes project and ongoing training and capacity building work.

For more information on these projects please visit the HDRUK web pages.

Learning Care Homes: Continuous improvement of structured referrals 

The Learning Care Homes project aims to evaluate and improve a Digital Care Homes app designed to support decision-making by care home and community staff when a care home resident becomes unwell. The process will allow the creation of an action plan by the community NHS team with the intention of reducing unnecessary hospital attendances and allowing residents to be cared for in their normal environment where appropriate.

The Project Leads are:

Graham King, Chief Information Officer, Newcastle Hospitals

Professor Suzanne Mason, Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Sheffield and Barnsley Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

For further information on the project please contact Rikki Crawley. Project Manager, HDRUK Northern Partnership; Digital Care Homes - rikki.crawley@sheffield.ac.uk

Learning Care Homes

We will evaluate the impact of introducing structured digital referrals from care homes to community on clinical outcomes for residents, hospital attendance/admission, health service costs, acceptability and utility to healthcare workers.

Training and Capacity Building 

The HDRUK Northern Partnership is well positioned to increase skills capacity in health data science. 

The three main aims are: 

(1) to increase health informatics and data science skills capacity in the NHS; 

(2) to enhance capability to conduct and scale research at the NHS-academia interface  to complete the Better Care loop; and 

(3) to increase awareness through ‘educating’ the public and NHS professionals in the uses of health data to impact on the delivery of healthcare, particularly through research. 

This Partnership will offer 20 twelve-week dissertation studentships and 12 six-week placements for NHS staff, studentships and 12 six-week placements for NHS staff.

As part of the training programme, the Partnership will also run workshops, both project specific, and more general on frailty, Learning Health Systems and methodology.