Our expertise is in making the most out of routinely collected health data to improve care for patients. Whether it’s stimulating recent NHS moves to provide 24/7 high-quality care, alerting the Care Quality Commission to problems at Mid Staffordshire Trust, providing a basis for better consultant cover during the junior doctor changeover, or evaluating the implementation of clinical guidelines, our aim is to improve the quality and safety of patient care in all NHS hospitals. By converting health data to meaningful action, we provide a key step in the quality improvement efforts of the NHS.

The unit was established in 2002 and is directed by Professor Paul Aylin, Professor in Epidemiology and consultant in Public Health, and Professor Alex Bottle, Professor of Medical Statistics. The unit sits within the Department of Primary Care and Public Health in the School of Public Health and brings together a mix of skills including computer programming, data management, statistics, epidemiology and public health. Due to our excellent links with other departments at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust we can also draw upon a wealth of clinical expertise, particularly in primary care, surgery and acute medicine.

Despite our small size, the unit has an excellent publication record with articles in leading academic journals, including the BMJ and the Lancet.

We work with a wide variety of centres, departments and organisations both internal and external to the College on patient safety and improving the quality of care within the NHS through the use of routinely collected medical data.