Blog | Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science

24 Nov 2020

Biologic Medicines for Severe Asthma

Victory! We have the hospital medicines data. Now: biologic medicines for severe Asthma In July, Ben and Brian wrote a piece in the British Medical Journal arguing that hospital medicines data should be openly shared. Magnificently, the NHS has now made secondary care medicines data (SCMD) available. You can read the full technical specification of the data here but briefly: it is hospital pharmacy stock control data, which is collected and processed by Rx-Info, and is now published on the NHS Business Services Authority website in the NHS dm+d standard we know, love, and have documented well.

7 Oct 2020

OpenPathology

This is the code related to our OpenPathology project. Specifically this repo stores ad-hoc analyses, papers, and related research. The code for the website (and online tool, when developed) are in their own repository.

7 Oct 2020

OpenPrescribing

This is the website code for https://openprescribing.net - a Django application that provides a REST API and dashboards for the English Prescribing Dataset published by the NHS Business Services Authority. Information about data sources used on OpenPrescribing can be found here.

7 Oct 2020

OpenSAFELY Cohort Extractor

This is the code for the OpenSAFELY cohort extractor tool which supports the authoring of OpenSAFELY-compliant research, by: Allowing developers to generate random data based on their study expectations. They can then use this as input data when developing analytic models. Supporting downloading of codelist CSVs from the OpenSAFELY codelists repository, for incorporation into the study definition Providing tools to understand and visualise the properties of real data, without having direct access to it It is also the mechanism by which cohorts are extracted from live database backends within the OpenSAFELY framework.

7 Oct 2020

OpenSAFELY Job Runner

This is the repository for the OpenSAFELY job runner. A job runner is a service that encapsulates: the task of checking out an OpenSAFELY study repo; executing actions defined in its project.yaml configuration file when requested via a jobs queue; and storing its results in a particular locations. The documentation is aimed at developers looking for an overview of how the system works. It also has some parts relevant for end users, particularly the project.

7 Oct 2020

OpenSAFELY Job Server

This is the code for the OpenSAFELY job server designed for mediating jobs that can be run in an OpenSAFELY secure environment. The Django app provides a simple REST API which provides a channel for communicating between low-security environments (which can request that jobs be run) and high-security environments (where jobs are run).

7 Oct 2020

What is OpenSAFELY?

What is OpenSAFELY? Working on behalf of NHS England we have now built a full, open source, highly secure analytics platform running across the full pseudonymised primary care records of 24 million people, rising soon to 55 million, 95% of the population of England. We have pursued a new model: for privacy, security, low cost, and near-real-time data access, we have built the analytics platform inside the EHR data centre of the major EHR providers, where the data already resides; in addition we have built software that uses tiered increasingly non-disclosive tables to prevent researchers ever needing direct access to the disclosive underlying data to run analyses; code is developed against simulated data using open platforms before moving to the live data environment.

4 Aug 2020

OpenPrescribing July Newsletter

OpenPrescribing and Bennett Institute Papers It has been a busy month for paper publication at The Bennett Institute. We have written a brief description of the most recent papers below. Please sharewith colleagues and get in touch if you have any relevant observations! Remember you can read all our academic papers related to OpenPrescribing on our research page. Hospital medicines data: We are frequently contacted at OpenPrescribing about when we are going to make a hospital version.

13 Jul 2020

NHS Dictionary of medicines and devices (dm+d): primary care prescribing of "hospital only" medicines

Update May 2021 Based on feedback received from users, the NHS dictionary of medicines and devices has decided to cease maintenance of the “hospital only” value at AMP level (it remains at AMPP level). As a result this means that we are no longer able to produce our “Hospital Only measure” and we have retired it. Just prior to the COVID-19 emergency we launched a new measure on OpenPrescribing, primary care prescribing of medicines defined by the NHS dictionary of medicines (dm+d) and devices as “hospital only”.

8 Jul 2020

How I use OpenPrescribing in my practice as a GP

A guest blog from Dr. Kevin Barrett (Twitter @DrKBarrett). Last week the British Journal of General Practice published our paper on unsafe prescribing of methotrexate. As part of the publication Dr. Kevin Barrett talked to BJGP (see video below) about how he used OpenPrescribing to identify potentially unsafe prescribing in his practice and has also written a short blog below. When I first started as a GP trainee in 1999 electronic prescribing was a relatively recent innovation.

23 Jun 2020

OpenPrescribing June Newsletter

Methotrexate Prescribing Safety — New paper in BJGP This week the British Journal of General Practice published our latest paper on unsafe prescribing of methotrexate. We found that the prevalence of unsafe methotrexate prescribing (10mg tablets) has reduced but remains common, with substantial variation between practices and CCGs. In the paper we also discuss recommendations for better strategies around implementation. Anyone can view the live data on unsafe methotrexate prescribing at openprescribing.

23 Jun 2020

Your Organisation's OpenPrescribing Custom Email Alerts

At OpenPrescribing we know that clinicians can be overwhelmed with guidance and data about many different aspects of care. We therefore have developed an innovative email alert service for every single practice, primary care network and clinical commissioning group in England that delivers bespoke custom emails to your inbox about your own organisations prescribing. To sign up to your organisation’s alerts all you need to do is: Go your organisation’s homepage.

28 May 2020

OpenPrescribing Newsletter May 2020

OpenSAFELY.org OpenSAFELY is a new secure analytics platform for electronic health records in the NHS, created to deliver urgent results during the global COVID-19 emergency. OpenSAFELY is a collaboration between the Bennett Institute, the EHR group at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and TPP who produce SystmOne. OpenSAFELY is now successfully delivering analyses across more than 24 million patients’ full pseudonymised primary care NHS records. The first analysis from OpenSAFELY is Factors associated with COVID-19-related hospital death in the linked electronic health records of 17 million adult NHS patients with more answers to important questions expected shortly.

22 May 2020

Impact of COVID-19 on prescribing in English general practice: March 2020

OpenPrescribing.net has been updated this week with the latest release of prescribing data covering March 2020. In-depth analysis will be needed over the coming months, but this release gives us the first glimpse into the impact that COVID-19 has had on prescribing. At the Bennett Institute we have been quite busy with the new secure analytics platform OpenSAFELY but the following blog is a rapid analysis of the March prescribing data which others may find helpful to focus their own investigations.

29 Mar 2020

COVID-19 TrialsTracker

This repository contains the data cleaning notebook, all necessary datasets, and the code for running the COVID-19 TrialsTracker website at covid19.trialstracker.net. Docker files are included to ensure a consistent environment for reproducibility.

21 Mar 2020

What are the most commonly prescribed medicines? Top 10 prescribed medicines in NHS England primary care for 2019

The following is a rapid analysis of the “top 10” medicines in NHS England primary care in 2019. We prepared this analysis for a user who wanted to use the list in a teaching session with students to prepare them for the medicines they will most commonly see in general practice. We are sure others will find it useful — please get in touch and tell us how you use it via Twitter or feedback@openprescribing.

17 Feb 2020

Changes to NHS medicines data: a rapid analysis from the Bennett Institute

At the Bennett Institute we like to work in the open and share our insights for the whole community, so we can fix a problem for us, then share the solution, and help fix it for everyone. We think this is efficient for us and the whole system. In this blog our magnificent coder Peter Inglesby sets out some analysis he has done of changes to the NHS prescribing data we use.

10 Feb 2020

NHS England Investment and Impact Fund — A new dashboard on OpenPrescribing

Update September 2020: NHS England have announced a reduction in the number of planned measures including the majority of the measures on OpenPrescribing. We will remove the IIF dashboard in a future update. Update: Due to COVID19 response NHS England has announced that the IIF will be postponed. We will continue to make this dashboard available as NHS England also states that they will continue to monitor the data to understand any impact.