Managed Data & Technology Services Archives

How River Island use ResolvID to effectively perform identity resolution on customer data

Posted on: 14 May 2024

Background

River Island is a beloved high street retailer that has brought leading fashion trends to UK shoppers for over sixty years, with both a digital and in-store presence.

When the brand began building a marketing and analytics data technology environment with only a Single Customer View (SCV)— a single record that merges all customer data– available, they recognised the need for a SaaS solution that would be able to perform real-time identity resolution on customer data.

The Challenge

Bringing the entire SCV in-house posed a significant challenge to River Island, having to terminate many data feeds and re-evaluate incoming and outbound data that lacked clarity. The original data feeds were also set up by employees who had since left the business, resulting in a trial by fire with their SCV.

The Solution

CACI configured ResolvID, a cloud native solution hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud infrastructure, to supply River Island with data cleansing, standardisation, identity resolution and deduplication. Developed with a Microservices architecture, the bespoke platform offers significant advantages through its scaling, resilience and flexibility when rapid changes and improvements are required.

ResolvID comprises horizontally and vertically scalable Microservices that perform different functions with a seamless interface to enhance River Island’s accessibility. The solution leverages advanced deterministic name and address matching techniques in conjunction with digital and non-digital identifiers specific to River Island customers and their data. As part of this initiative, CACI took a three-step approach to effectively perform identity resolution on River Island’s customer data.

The Results

Leveraging ResolvID has resulted in many tangible benefits for River Island, including the creation of various customer dashboards to monitor more targeted figures and generate better, more timely data that bolsters targeted customer campaigns. There have also been noticeable improvements in workload efficiencies, such as cutting down the time required to action workloads to increase the team’s focus on refining their future strategy of doing more with their data to retain oversight on customer performance.

Once we swapped to ResolvID, the numbers we got were close enough to give us confidence that the deduplication received from ResolvID worked better than our previous managed service.

Ben Anderton, Technical Lead at River Island, shared how this real-time capability now enables the confident and immediate actioning of data and customer signups to produce effective campaigns based on genuine buying behaviours and generate accurate results.

Read the case study

You can access and download the full case study here.

If you have any questions or want to learn more, please get in touch with us to discuss what strategies and solutions that our team of experts can help you deliver.

What is InView?

Posted on: 26 July 2023

InView is CACI’s data platform that is specifically designed for the NHS. It is modular by design with over 30 modules out of the box, and makes data sharing for ICS simple and efficient through its standardisation and safety in data management. The flexibility, maintenance and content provided by a standard data platform built in-house can only go so far. Considering the many pressures faced by NHS Trusts daily, they need a data platform that supports—rather than hinders– them.

InView empowers NHS Trusts nationwide to enhance their reporting and unlock the potential of their data by ensuring that all data reporting is correct, consistent and complete within a singular integrated solution that will transform patient care outcomes.

But how exactly does InView work? And what makes it so beneficial for the NHS? This blog will dive into everything you need to know about InView so you can make informed decisions about your own data platform.

How does InView work?

To meet the high volume of mandated statutory changes and local reporting requirements, your Trust should be equipped with a solid data platform that is easy to use and fully maintained. InView is risk-free*, robust and easily maintained, ensuring that you and your Trust can meet these requirements by providing all key statutory outputs and fully maintaining them in line with NHS change notifications as part of core product releases.

Designed and built in a way that promotes rapid implementation of a solution within a Trust, InView secures you with plenty of pre-built content from all disparate data sources in one unified, trustworthy solution. Each of InView’s 30 modules is built from a sophisticated, layered design that will keep future maintenance costs down and future proofing up. Its layers include:

Acquisition Layer: This layer accepts the data from incoming data sources and is designed to accept data in a raw format prior to any data checking.
Integration Layer: As the middle ground between the Acquisition layer and the upcoming Translation layer, this layer moves data from one source to the other and performs matching between data sources. Trust-specific business rules are implemented and dictate how incoming data affects the information stored in the data warehouse.
Translation Area: Data quality and integrity checking are carried out during this layer. This part of the processing also restructures data into a “star schema” model.
Data Model: The aforementioned “star-schema” model is created at this layer, which is optimised for ad-hoc querying and historical data storage. It supports the historical storage of fact data, manages changes to dimensional data and hierarchical structures and ensures historical reporting is conducted effectively.
Serving Layer: This layer interacts with the InView user graphical user interface (GUI) to simplify configuration. Database views can be created at this layer to support reporting with minimal effort required from the end user. Real time data can also be presented at this layer, and non-InView data can also be combined to supplement any data you need to report on.
Compliance Layer: This layer is where all statutory outputs are maintained and released to the Trust.

Where can InView be deployed?

InView can be deployed either on premise, in the Cloud, or hosted in CACI’s HSCN environment. Once deployed, our highly skilled technical experts forming the Managed Services team will work alongside you to ensure that you and your Trust are constantly supported after InView goes live. We will support you throughout the entire project implementation through fully transferring the necessary skills that will help you and your Trust feel more self-sufficient when using InView.

Benefits of using InView

NHS Trusts need accurate, reliable and readily available data for critical reporting and decision making. While this is crucial, it can be one of the biggest challenges for data professionals across the NHS to overcome. InView’s range of benefits can help you and your Trust overcome these challenges through its:

Consistency: As a proven in-house solution that promotes a single version of the truth
Availability: As a maintained product that can supply end-to-end reporting and can be implemented with all local rules correctly applied to incoming data
Efficiency: As a partner that is committed to continuously enhancing its solution
Flexibility: As an easy-to-use, extendable solution that is tailored to your Trust’s requirements and ensures your Trust will adapt to changes quickly
Reliability: As a modern, interactive solution that allows for sharing not only within your organisation, but with ICS partners and NHSE too.
Volume: As a solution that reduces the onus of statutory changes on the Trust
Low cost of ownership: As a low total cost of ownership solution with maintained product content and changes that a Trust can action themselves.

InView use cases

InView produces a single, governed version of the truth that will drive consistent numbers that will enhance decision making, financial measurement, forecasting and information sharing across your Trust. By leveraging InView, you can present data for all purposes from one cohesive source to your Trust’s existing BI Toolset, which will simplify the reporting process and minimise the training needed for your Trust’s analysts.

To get a sense of just how streamlined these processes within your Trust can be, take a look at some our of client case studies:

CACI as your InView provider

CACI has been providing Trusts with a solution that evolves and meets the demands of NHS reporting for over 20 years. Our very own data platform, InView, integrates all disparate source systems to optimise reporting across your Trust. By removing the statutory maintenance burden and time-consuming running of mandated reporting datasets, you and your Trust can focus on achieving priorities while meeting requirements and responding to any ad-hoc or urgent changes as they arise. To top it off, you will gain access to a user community for collaborative content and idea generation and learn how you can further enhance your own InView experience through other users’ takeaways.

To learn more about InView and how our data warehouse solution could help your organisation, visit our InView page.

*Risk-free for mandated statutory requirements

How Synergy revitalised Dorset HealthCare’s costing team

Posted on: 23 June 2023

Background:

Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust offers a range of mental health and physical health services to people of all ages from children to elderly. These services are delivered in both hospital and community-based settings.

The costing team at Dorset HealthCare has long used CACI’s patient-level costing solution, Synergy, to reach various goals due to its high-quality outputs and proven abilities in easing the National Cost Collection submission process. According to Chris Badminton, Head of Income & Costing at Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust, “I couldn’t see how another provider could compare with its capabilities.”

Challenge:

As long-time Synergy users, Dorset HealthCare’s costing team knew that CACI’s patient level costing solution would help them navigate their most pressing challenges, such as:

Acquiring the necessary patient level costing information that would inform decision-making about clinical care at Dorset HealthCare, which had been exceedingly difficult.

The team was previously equipped with indecipherable data. It was input manually into spreadsheets and could not supply the necessary intelligence to overcome hurdles. “Without Synergy4, we’d never be able to generate outputs to support the challenges that we faced,” Chris explained.
They struggled to get results out to stakeholders or present the results in a dashboard format that could be shared internally.
Limited engagement from the necessary stakeholders became a blocker when trying to make the most of data and tools available to the costing team.

Solution:

Through Synergy, Dorset HealthCare has been overcoming challenges and revitalising their costing teams’ capabilities in several impactful ways. For example, consultancy and support from CACI in the form of a help desk has helped keep the costing team up-to-date and running smoothly.

“I access the helpdesk quite a bit. [The help desk] is always incredibly helpful and we always get the solutions and the answers that we desire,” Chris explained. “I also have regular customer care meetings and they’re really useful as well.”

CACI’s Synergy User Group has also helped inform Dorset HealthCare’s clinical care planning and patient engagement strategisation through knowledge sharing opportunities with other NHS organisations.

“The Synergy User Group is also a great space for sharing and understanding how other [NHS Foundation Trusts’] challenges are being dealt with and for idea sharing,” Chris continued. “This has been really useful not only for the use of the product, but for understanding what the outputs need to be in order to get that engagement internally to support how we deliver clinical care at Dorset HealthCare.”

Synergy has also bolstered the costing team’s management abilities ahead of annual National Cost Collection (NCC) submissions.

“With regards to the National Cost Collection of the mandatory element of the functionality, that has far exceeded my expectations,” Chris continued. “The piece of work that’s been developed by [CACI] makes our management process on an annual basis incredibly easy.”

Results / Benefits:

Overall, the costing team’s evolution as a result of Synergy has been, as Chris stated, “over and above”.

“The speed of [Synergy] and the way that you can calculate and produce results is phenomenal… including its usability and how intuitive it is,” Chris continued. “It’s above what we would’ve expected.”

Equipped with Synergy data, Dorset HealthCare’s costing team is now developing analysis to support decision making for their improved access to psychological therapies (IAPT) service. Currently, the data that Chris has presented back to the organisation through Synergy is being deciphered, and the costing team is finding ways to reiterate the analyses for other areas of the Trust.

“I think [this service] is going to become something that is rolled out across all services within our mental health function to enhance the care that an individual could receive,” Chris explained. “It’s on the cusp of becoming something big for good evidence that has been supported by Synergy.”

Outcomes/Future:

Going forward, Dorset HealthCare hope to receive a regular analysis that can be used across the organisation to guide the way that clinical care at Dorset Healthcare should be delivered and further improve patient outcomes. Not only would a regular analysis enhance patient experiences, but it would also encourage the costing team’s conscious, intelligent allocation and spending of funds.

In the meantime, the costing team will continue focusing their efforts on health inequalities. They are currently looking into deprivation data, a process that involves manually exporting data from government and other websites to generate data that can be compared against or linked to existing patient level activity data used for Dorset HealthCare’s costing submissions and costing reports. The goal is that the costing team will eventually be able to use or link the data to compare results to other NHS organisations. This would help them better understand what a patient’s pathway looks like, the costs associated with specific types of care and how Dorset HealthCare can learn from other organisations to apply best practices to their own.

How InView enhanced Stockport’s data collection & processing capabilities

Posted on:

Background:

When Stockport NHS Foundation Trust first looked to procure a data warehouse, they were adamant about choosing a provider with a proven track record and experience of delivering products and services to the NHS. Following recommendations and success stories from other users of CACI’s NHS data warehouse solution, InView, it was clear that a partnership with CACI would guarantee Stockport a smooth process with a mature and established provider.

Challenge:

Stockport needed one platform that would contain all data in one place to simplify the collection process and help the team regain control of their data. Over the years, numerous reporting database tables evolved to the point that multiple individual servers were created. This resulted in many duplications with multiple databases across multiple tables, data not being consolidated or structured, analysts having to work across servers and inconsistent information being produced. Having one unified platform would ensure that everyone would pull data from the same source and would avoid analysts working in silos and creating their own new sources of data. A consolidated data platform would provide much needed resilience and structure.

Stockport also wanted to take control of their statutory data processing and reporting. They needed flexibility and control over their own data developments, including more automated data submissions and reporting.

Solution:

CACI’s InView equipped Stockport with a mature data platform that has defined all statutory returns and commissioning datasets. It supports the team’s existing grouping and pricing processes and significantly reduces their month end manual processing, freeing up their time to dedicate their efforts to additional data analysis instead.

Through InView, the team also gained access to a unique support desk headed by a team of CACI’s technical experts, ensuring that any issues arising at Stockport could be mitigated precisely and timely.

“You don’t normally get someone that could just as easily have developed the product on a support line. [Our CACI support lead] knows InView inside out… not only does he know the products, but he also knows NHS data quite well,” Rory MacDonald, Lead Analyst at Stockport, explained.

“We have a lot of confidence in the fact that CACI’s [team of customer care individuals] understand NHS data and keep up to date on policy decisions to be able to respond quickly to changes,” Debbie Hope, Chief Data Officer at Stockport, continued.

Stockport was also able to identify gaps in the recording of patient observations, with a customised InView module specially developed by another one of CACI’s delivery support leads to enhance Stockport’s reporting capabilities. Through InView, the team could rest assured that all statutory elements would be addressed and that building any added functionalities within the platform would be done quickly and easily.

The latest enhancement that CACI’s delivery support lead is developing for Stockport is for their audiology data extraction and collection, whereby data is extracted from their system and data quality reports are being created to find any issues. This helps Stockport streamline some of their diagnostic waiting times reporting.

Results / Benefits:

According to Rory, CACI’s consultancy and support has far exceeded the organisation’s expectations. “The consultants were all really good in terms of both their technical expertise and dynamic advice,” he commented.
A noticeable reduction in the overall time spent processing overnight. After setting up a delta load, Stockport realised that every piece of information in their system dating back from the 1980s was being copied over. This process took progressively longer each day because the amount of data being copied over was continuously increasing. They worked with CACI on setting up a delta load where they could identify using interface messages, pull any necessary information and load it into the data warehouse, which significantly sped up the processing time.
The availability of data. “It’s available to be reported on from early in the morning,” Rory explained.
The enhanced data warehouse solution allowed Stockport to produce their own national CDS extracts. “We were reliant on and restricted to the pace of our PAS supplier previously for the development of those extracts when there were national changes,” Debbie explained. “We’ve removed that reliance and taken full control of those national extracts.”
Moving away from manually processing commissioner assignment within the PAS system. “It was a very manual process for using the contracting functionality within our patient administration system to assign the Commissioner for who pays for a particular piece of activity,” Rory explained. “Now that we’ve got all the national commissioner assignment method (CAM) rules written in the data warehouse, we’ve been able to switch off the functionality on the PAS system and transform the work of our data quality team.”

Outcomes/Future:

Stockport’s future ambitions include completely switching off all of the old servers with the legacy reporting databases so that the organisation can have only one development server and one production server for the data warehouse. They are also keen to increase the provision of real-time reporting. CACI will continue to support Stockport by analysing patient flow and frequently refreshing in-patient data to help Stockport understand exactly who is in the hospital at that time, what service they may be waiting for and how waiting times can be reduced, and overall support with the maintenance of their data warehouse.

Legacy application interoperability & integration in the Police Force

Posted on: 8 June 2023

For those watching what seems like a proliferation of Police dramas on television, you might be impressed by how easily data is shared between partner organisations: Officers tap into numerous IT systems to retrieve vital information that is key to solving their case.

Sadly, as you would probably expect, the reality is somewhat different.

Data sharing

The Digital Government report from July 2019 highlighted that data sharing is key to ensuring that digital Government can be transformative. It enables departments to work together to produce efficient public services that work for the citizen, thus improving the citizen-Government relationship.

The new National Data Strategy also recognises the importance data has to play in enhancing economic competitiveness and productivity across the UK economy, through new data enabled business models, and the adoption of data driven processes.

Data sharing has long been discussed within Policing. One of the key recommendations of the Bichard child protection inquiry in 2003 was that all forces across the UK should improve how they collect, store and share data.

In 2005 the Information Systems Strategy for the Police Service (ISS4PS) highlighted “The importance of a national approach to information sharing is now uppermost in current strategy for policing as reflected in the National Policing Plan.”

The following year the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) Guidance on the management of Police Information talked of effective Policing relying on the Police Service to communicate and share information with other forces and partner agencies.

Fast forward 15 years and the National Policing Digital Strategy 2020-30 prioritises the need to deepen collaboration with public sector agencies to unlock effectiveness, by developing ‘fluid’ data and insight exchange, within appropriate ethical and legal boundaries.

Collaboration is necessity

No-one can fail to notice the masses of data that is being created today and the fact that it is growing at an unprecedented rate.

Over the last 15 years, Policing has also started to see an explosion in the data that it holds. Allied to this is a growing pressure for them to start to utilise and share this data to their advantage.

Citizens are starting to demand and expect more from the Police service. With resources more stretched than ever, Police are now having to look at new ways of working – becoming smarter in utilizing the information they have available to them and sharing it to obtain greater insight.

No-one can accurately predict how the next 15 years will unfold, but as digital trends rapidly evolve across all areas of our lives, the abundance of data and the vast array of sources from which it emanates will continue to grow.

For a long time, public sector bodies have been locked into the mentality that they need to be autonomous in their operation, harbouring their own data and with the ideas of collaboration and sharing being forced rather than instinctive.

More recently though, policing as with all public sector, has seen austerity and the ever increasing need to save money as a driver towards more collaboration and data sharing.

A by-product of this is the ability to provide a better-quality service and a more rewarding citizen experience. Agencies are provided with a more holistic view of the individuals they are dealing with and their circumstances, allowing them to make better informed decisions.

Given this win, win scenario, it seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?

Why’s taking too long?

If the idea of collaboration and sharing of data is clearly beneficial on a number of levels, why have we been discussing it for so long without taking any action?

The biggest obstacle to collaboration and data sharing is arguably a wealth of stand-alone, legacy applications that exist within Police estates.

“Legacy systems are invariably built on outdated architectures with high maintenance costs, inherent inflexibility, redundant features, lack of connectivity and low efficiency. Complex application and process logic is often hard-coded and undocumented.”

Gartner Oct. 2019

“Legacy systems are a significant barrier to effective Government transformation and digitisation.”

Digital Government report, July 2019

Given the autonomous mentality that previously existed, Police applications were never built with collaboration in mind.

This means that these legacy systems don’t easily provide the ability to interact and share their data with other applications – they are siloed, with the data being accessible only by the application to which it relates.

All is not lost however. There are numerous different approaches we can use to help create interoperability and integration for your legacy applications:

Rehost: redeploy the application component to other infrastructure (physical, virtual or cloud) without modifying its code, features or functions. This allows significant, short-term technology benefits without altering the application code base. Benefits of migrating to the cloud include: Improved application resilience; Disaster Recovery; Scalability; Accessibility.
Re-platform: migrate to a new runtime platform, making minimal changes to the code, but not the code structure, features or functions. This enables the application to run on modern technology framework while limiting the requirement for a major development project.
Refactor: restructure and optimize the existing code (although not its external behaviour) to enable data sharing and improve non-functional attributes. Refactoring focuses on breaking up the legacy code base into smaller manageable modules allowing consistent improvements to the application through small, iterative release cycles.
Re-architect: materially alter the code to shift it to a new application architecture and exploit new and better capabilities. This will leverage and extend the application features while introducing new integration concepts to promote data sharing and deduplication. Where appropriate an Application Programming Interface (API) would be developed to allow data sharing between application/modules over a secure HTTPS protocol.
Rebuild: redesign or rewrite the application component from scratch while preserving its scope and specifications. When deciding to rebuild an application, consideration should be taken to ensure the architecture is designed in a modular, scalable fashion promoting data sharing and future integrations using a combination of APIs and messaging architecture.
Replace: eliminate the former application component altogether and replace it, considering new requirements and needs at the same time.

To find out more about how we could help your organisation unlock integration and interoperability, take a look at our Police page.

CACI awarded Adobe’s Digital Experience Emerging Partner of the Year 2023

Posted on: 21 March 2023

London – 20th March 2023 – CACI is proud to announce that we have been awarded Adobe’s Digital Experience Emerging Partner of the Year 2023. Adobe’s Digital Experience partner awards acknowledge companies that have made significant contributions to Adobe’s business and have had a significant impact on customer success.

To secure this award, the team at CACI has demonstrated a strong level of investment and engagement in the Adobe partnership. This is measured through solution licensing, services, and the number of certifications and specializations held. We have also worked closely with Adobe to ensure that our relationship is of the highest quality and that we are working together to drive value for our clients.

We are thrilled to have received this recognition, and it highlights our commitment to providing exceptional services to our clients. The award was announced at Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, and we are excited to share this news with our clients and partners. CACI will be present at Adobe Summit UK this June and we look forward to seeing you there. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you’d like to meet at the event.

David Sealey, Director of Strategy and Growth at CACI, said,

“Adobe’s solutions to deliver enhanced customer experiences are an essential part of our market offering. I’m delighted that this award recognizes the hard work of CACI’s commercial and delivery team as they implement, optimize, and support brands with Adobe. It’s also important to acknowledge the importance of our clients who have the vision and determination to deliver better experiences to their customers.”

CACI’s expertise with Adobe extends across Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and the Adobe Experience Platform. Our focus for 2023 and 2024 is to help organizations evolve their Adobe stack in pursuit of greater performance, reliability, and the ability to launch new use cases.

Should you wish to find out more about CACI’s services for Adobe products, please feel free to get in touch.

Why NHS costing systems can’t stand still

Posted on: 18 November 2022

The NHS landscape is constantly evolving – it’s the responsibility of trusted solution partners to keep pace with NHS organisations and contribute expert data knowledge to help them on their journey

Everyone’s talking about finance collaboration in the new Integrated Care System (ICS) structure, but it’s not easy for anyone to make headway in this unfamiliar landscape. It’s not as if the decks have been cleared to make time and space to understand and address the opportunity: NHS leaders and finance teams are still grappling with everyday pressures and priorities within their own Trust. ICS is another challenge to add, albeit one that offers excellent opportunities to improve patient care and experiences.

Up to now, costing data has been used by NHS Trusts for national cost collection (NCC) and internal service line reporting. Solutions like CACI’s Synergy 4 help Trusts to make this happen in the most efficient and integrated way possible and to gain greater value from their data for service design and improvement. But now, there’s a new challenge level. How can Trusts also share and embrace costing data from other Trusts within their ICS?

The rewards of understanding and analysing patient pathways across organisations

In principle, it’s clear that a holistic approach to analysing patient pathways – spanning acute, mental health, ambulance and social care organisations and community settings – has the power to greatly improve patient outcomes and experiences as well as delivering better value and efficiency to ease the burden on NHS care teams. But the practical processes and channels for sharing data and insight are far from clear.

CACI’s NHS engagement team has been working closely with our NHS clients to understand the complex considerations around sharing data between Trusts in a secure way that produces reliable and meaningful information that can help develop patient-centric services and make the most of NHS resources.

Trusts are engaging with a range of new data challenges for ICS

Information Governance (IG) for shared data is a key concern for NHS finance teams. Data must be anonymised, in order to protect patient confidentiality, but Trusts must be able to match patient identifiers to understand the end-to-end pathway through multiple touchpoints and organisations.

Finance teams are also keen to understand more about the quality of data that could be shared by other Trusts. Data formats may be an issue: there are multiple systems and data sources in use, even within individual Trusts, which can make it hard to match data and adopt a holistic approach. With clinical decisions and budget allocation potentially riding on the analysis, it’s critically important that pooled data is accurate, de-duplicated and in comparable formats, to avoid inaccuracies. Reporting on insight from shared data can produce unfamiliar results in the broader ICS context: for NHS leaders to trust the integrity of the data and analysis, these results need to be clearly presented and explained.

These are uncharted waters for NHS Trusts, for the new ICS organisations and for data solution partners like CACI. It’s not surprising that most efforts to launch costing data-sharing projects have so far been tentative. We’ve talked to finance managers who have shared data to explore the opportunity – generally they’ve done this in manual and fragmented ways, such as emailing manually created data files. This is clearly not a scalable approach for time-poor NHS finance teams, even if the attendant data protection and security issues could be resolved.

Operational finance teams can see the potential, but many are worried about IG, concerned about undermining their own Trust’s financial priorities within the ICS and don’t have the time or the mandate to focus on unpacking the issues. It’s already creating frustration. Some NHS leaders have a management accountancy background: they don’t yet have the data literacy training or experience to champion or direct a completely new costing data-sharing approach with confidence. This is a challenge we’ve also recognised: CACI’s Healthcare Insight Success Cycle (HISC) includes data literacy training modules which can help increase knowledge and confidence.

Collaboration with solution partners can enable ICS collaboration

How can NHS Trusts and ICS organisations break down these barriers and access the resources they need to unlock the potential of data-sharing? Partners like CACI can help to shoulder some of the load by ensuring that technology and data solutions are continually evolved and adapted to handle the emerging opportunities and challenges. Driven by the feedback and hands-on experience we gain from our NHS colleagues, we’re working on our Synergy proposition to develop the data-sharing, analytics and IG capabilities that will support the emerging ICS data-sharing requirement.

We know that ICS organisations are at different stages of their thinking about Trusts. They also have diverse levels of capability, resources and experience in producing Trust-level service insight from costing data. Everyone has a different starting point for their new ICS data-sharing journey.

How does your Trust’s approach and experience to date match up with our current understanding of the ICS landscape? At CACI, we’re highly aware that priorities, issues and opportunities are constantly evolving within the NHS. We’re rising to the challenge of delivering a costing proposition that’s built for the complex demands of today and tomorrow, supporting better outcomes for patients, better decision information for clinicians and better use of resources for the NHS. We want to support Trust finance and analytics teams by sharing our NHS data knowledge to help build data literacy among NHS leaders, so they can champion ICS from a position of understanding.

That’s why we are working alongside our NHS colleagues, engaging with their current challenges and offering data strategy, process and capability insight to help them move forward on the journey, as we evolve our Synergy proposition.

Please join the conversation through our user groups and round tables or get in touch directly to share your priorities and issues and pose any questions that we could help you answer through our NHS data experience and expertise. Contact consultant Susan Brooks in CACI’s NHS team.

Integrated care systems – is your Trust maximising opportunities?

Posted on: 21 September 2022

Since 2018, the NHS has seen Trusts building closer relationships with local councils and other important strategic partners such as the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector.

The 2021 NHS Long Term Plan cemented an integrated care system (ICS) that would build on lessons learned and invest in keeping people healthy, while setting future social care priorities.

The introduction of ICS throughout the NHS, along with the government’s new Health and Care Bill, brings health care under one umbrella, and highlights the importance of data sharing to enable joined up support across the NHS, local councils, and other partners.

ICS is helping change attitudes to data sharing and how data can be used to improve service provision. This presents a huge opportunity for NHS organisations to improve services and accelerate elective care activity. It enables better use of data by consolidating, managing and sharing it more efficiently and easily, resulting in better care through more easily pinpointing where problems or hurdles exist.

While Trusts will have a wealth of organisation and patient data, bringing it together to produce meaningful insight that can drive decision making and improvements, and access additional funding, is crucial.

Joining up health services

The Health and Care Bill changes how the NHS is structured and puts ICS on a statutory footing, enabling partnerships that better join up health and care service, improve the community’s health, and reduce health inequalities. Benchmarking across Trusts becomes possible, enabling more effective and consistent patient outcomes.

Each ICS is led by an Integrated Care Board (ICB), which will have responsibility for NHS functions and budgets across the ICS. The system sees 42 new ICBs replace Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), with a change from 106 CCG geographic areas to 42 ICBs.

Currently, much of the work with data in the NHS focusses on delivering upon statutory requirements. But moving forward, data will also become a tool for planning and measuring, informing decision making for improvements to clinical practise and leveraging data to improve the cost of care and the patient experience.

Sharing information across Trusts enables benchmarking of services, while patient pathways remain the priority at all touchpoints. Technology can be used to leverage knowledge of the environment and constraints and provide a proactive view of activity. This will allow Trusts to have a much clearer view of the entire patient journey, and will be the start of the changing future of healthcare.

It will help ICS to look ahead at long-term population heath needs based on demographic data, and better understand future problems – enabling a next level of planning that may not previously have been considered.

The current state of integrated care systems

The NHS Confederation, which supports and speaks for the healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, has carried out a review of ICS progress in 2021/22.

In the first of what will be annual reports into the evolution of ICS, it highlights what is working well and where it feels improvements are needed. These include:

ICS leaders may not have sufficient time and space to deliver the radical changes needed.
ICSs should make decisions at the most local level possible and be empowered to define what metrics they will be assessed on based on local priorities.
One of the biggest strengths of ICS so far has been improving joint working between partner organisations. Around 90% of system leaders believe they have been able to effectively improve joint working.
System leaders are committed to the principle of subsidiarity and 90% say this principle already applies to their system.
Another strength of ICS has been local workforces. ICS leaders feel they are making significant contributions to mitigate workforce pressures and improve working culture, with nearly 80% confident to deliver a ‘one workforce’ approach by July 2022.
More support is needed to help systems contribute to local social and economic development.
There is uncertainty about how the experiences and insights of leading primary care services at neighbourhood level inform system-level planning and strategy.
The biggest obstacle to further progress is national workforce shortages. The NHS Confederation is seeking amendments to the health and care bill to strengthen the duties of the Secretary of State for workforce planning, and has asked the government to develop and publish a health and care workforce strategy as a priority.

Taking the next steps forward

Data insight is crucial to help Trusts improve patient outcomes and drive cost savings. But finding the best approach to accessing the right funding and realising your digital strategy presents its own challenges.

CACI’s NHS services portfolio demonstrates our ability to support data projects at any stage of the data lifecycle, helping Trusts determine local priorities, accelerate timelines, maximise staff resources, improve joint working, and plan strategically for the future. And we combine all this with our wide experience of healthcare customers.

Data can become the building blocks of your solutions, showing you where services are at capacity, how to redesign them to avoid bottlenecks, and how to meet challenges and maximise opportunities.

Plan a call with one of our NHS experts today and take the first step towards optimising your organisation’s data provision.

Read our latest blog ‘Challenges facing NHS Trusts – and how to tackle them’.

And for more expert insight, download our essential whitepaper – Elective Care, how NHS changes are bringing opportunities for Trusts and patient care.

Challenges facing NHS Trusts – and how to tackle them

Posted on: 1 September 2022

Delivering better patient outcomes and value, while meeting targets and anticipating future needs, can be a challenge for NHS teams. There is constant pressure to do more with less, and with a high demand for service, quality is under intense scrutiny.

Even before the pandemic, waiting lists for elective treatment were growing. But by the end of 2021, 6.07 million patients were on waiting lists – the largest number since records began. As of September 2021, there were between 7.6 million and 9.1 million missing referrals of patients for elective care, and between 240,000 and 740,000 missing urgent referrals for suspected cancer.

“People will face serious health consequences as a result of delays in treatment, with some dying earlier than they otherwise would, and many living with pain or discomfort for longer than they otherwise would,” stated a March 2022 House of Commons report.

Tackling elective care challenges

The government expects the NHS to deliver around 30% more elective activity by 2024/25 than it was before the pandemic and has allocated £13.9bn in additional funding to tackle the elective backlog.

NHS Trusts are now exploring how they can access support to meet their targets, improve the patient experience and bring down waiting times. Digitisation is being seen by many as the silver bullet that will help solve their problems.

Over the past 20 years, elective care performance has been measured primarily through wait time targets, but changes to how the NHS monitors performance has seen the advent of new activity-based targets. The pandemic enabled a level of digital transformation that might otherwise have taken several years, and Trusts are looking to capitalise on this to deliver on these activity-based outcomes.

The Elective Care Recovery Fund is a £1bn pot of government money helping the NHS get back up to speed, and to aid different healthcare systems in working closer and more collaboratively.

Funding is awarded based on performance (i.e. increases in activity such as appointments or procedures). In order to utilise the funding, Trusts need to understand where there are opportunities to increase activity, make changes to create these increases, and be able to evidence them.

Data analytics can enable them to do this through forecasting, hypothesis testing and real-time analysis of wait times and patient journeys. Any activity above 95% of 2019/20 levels is reimbursed at 120% of tariff.

Digitisation of NHS services

Remote appointments are one key element of the patient journey where savings can be made. NHS England aims for up to a third of face-to-face outpatient appointments to be avoided by 2024 – saving £1.1bn and 30 million hospital visits.

In Norwich, a virtual ward launched in 2021 has saved nearly 2,000 bed days. The ‘ward’ enables patients to receive remote care from their own homes, with up to 20 patients a day being treated. Vitals such as temperature, blood pressure and oxygen are monitored via a strap around their arm and staff carry out virtual rounds through daily phone or video calls.

More than 80% of integrated care systems (ICS) now have a digitally-supported virtual ward, and these innovative forms of patient care are demonstrating how digital technology and data systems can enable Trusts to release capacity and deliver more efficient services.

Helping Trusts invest and utilise funding

Finding a different way through the pathways and exploring where the bottlenecks are and where there is capacity in the systems, is another crucial step forward, as is access to funding.

In April 2022, a new NHS payments system was introduced that enables an agreed local plan to be put in place between ICS members, targeting volume and case mix. A provider can earn a higher tariff for activity that exceeds the levels in the plan and for scoring highly on their CQUIN indicators.

Data insight is crucial to help NHS organisations plan, operate and continually optimise resources, services, and staffing – ensuring better theatre utilisation, staff rostering, waiting list reduction, capacity planning and operational management.

Advanced data analytics also enables NHS organisations to access the right available funding to help with a holistic recovery. Optimising data enables Trusts to explore opportunities, evidence these, and show changes being made – helping Trusts plug gaps and improve the patient outcome.

Next steps for Trusts

To meet the challenges currently facing the NHS, Trusts should be considering how to augment and optimise their data capabilities. A key step is to access and consolidate data from a variety of sources to inform deep and actionable insight about patients, services, and demand.

NHS Trusts will all be at different stages of their digital journey, but any additional funding they can optimise will be crucial. To do so they will need to understand where there are opportunities to increase activity, how to make changes to create these increases, and be able to evidence them.

CACI’s solution can help Trusts get the best outcome from the new NHS payment system and additional funding, and deliver the outcomes you need. We’re proud of our long-standing relationships with many NHS organisations across all care settings. We have hands-on experience of the pressures and opportunities facing your NHS organisation and the need for trustworthy information to support transformation and sustainability. Plan a call with one of our NHS experts today and take the first step towards optimising your organisation’s data provision. Visit our website.

And for more expert insight, download our most recent whitepaper – Elective Care, how NHS changes are bringing opportunities for Trusts and patient care.

The difference between reporting and insight

Posted on: 17 August 2022

Data is no use to NHS organisations without the expertise and tools to make it actionable

Data has become more and more significant in all industries and settings. The NHS is no exception. With a huge amount of patient, service and performance data at its disposal, there should be a wealth of insight available to help shape patient care and develop the best services in every community.

But there’s a very important caveat. Everyone knows that raw data doesn’t provide actionable information. That’s why it’s generally issued in the form of reports. But what do the reports tell you?

Reporting on data is not the same as generating meaningful and transformative insight from it.

It’s common for NHS organisations to produce reports that list statistics and objects without the context or perspective that could give them meaning as a basis for decisions. These reports can tell us what has happened and provide headline figures for costs, volumes and timeframes, but they don’t reveal insight.

Drawing insight from data means looking at it through a new lens. It could mean evaluating how past performance could influence future behaviours and decisions. It could mean modelling multiple hypothetical scenarios to decide the best approach from several options.

Data reporting is a valid exercise when you’re monitoring performance against fixed objectives. But it’s generally a historical, static activity. The data insight that NHS organisations need is about planning for the future and adjusting programmes in-flight to reflect the latest information and evolving patient needs. It’s about scenario modelling. It’s about bringing together different datasets, to gain more and more detailed and specific understanding of the causes of outcomes and what influences them. This kind of data insight is truly transformative because it allows NHS organisations to continually scrutinise, optimise and innovate in their services and care.

The impact of true insight on NHS services

Sarah Culkin, Interim Head of the Analytics Unit at NHSX, and Sukhmeet Panesar, Deputy Director within NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Data, Analysis and Intelligence Service describe the impact of data insight: “Knowledge is power. In healthcare, it is often life-saving. The NHS generates a huge amount of data which can be analysed and used to drive improvements in care and how services are run. Ultimately, data analysis results in improved patient outcomes and experience, as well as optimal use of NHS resources.”

Trusts and NHS service providers know that data is valuable. Many have already invested in data solutions and tools designed to store and analyse information. But not all are generating powerful and potentially life-saving insight. Digital insight for healthcare is a constantly evolving field, with new tools and technologies emerging to extract more relevant information. It can be hard to keep pace with the range of data resources on offer and to know how to prioritise system development and investment.

Acquiring and acting on insight demands data literacy in teams

Sarah Culkin and Sukhmeet Panesar highlight another key issue that affects many NHS organisations in their quest to use data to improve services: “In general, the NHS is failing to make the most of its data because there are not enough people with the right analytical skills to make sense of the information being collected.”

Data insight and analytics is a fast-evolving field. Without training, mentoring and support from specialists who understand the NHS environment as well as the potential of data, NHS managers and analysts cannot make informed decisions and harness the data they have to best effect. Education and skills are key – both for general data literacy in NHS clinical, management, operations and finance teams, and for analytics and technology in the data science teams who support them.

With all the data you collect, are you making the most of it to support crucial trust or service decisions and to deliver responsive, patient-centric care that meets real-time needs?

If you’d like to find out more about CACI’s Data Maturity Assessment service, or our data and analytics training, please get in touch. It’s all part of our HISC (Healthcare Insight Success Cycle) data optimisation approach for NHS organisations. Find out more by downloading our brochure Spearheading your data journey to improve patient outcomes.

Is knowledge and skills a barriers to transformative insight for your NHS organisation? Working with a specialist NHS data transformation partner could help you achieve best value from your data and budgets.

Find out how CACI’s healthcare team can provide advice on developing and maintaining your technology and offer staff training for data literacy and skills, so you can sustain your data journey from within. For further information, visit or website or get in touch with our NHS client team.