Surgeons operating on a patient

One of our key aims is to research how best to use administrative databases to inform how the NHS is performing both overall but also at the level of hospital, surgeon and within primary care. Challenges that we tackle include how to best process these complex data sets, indicator development, risk adjustment, statistical monitoring and feeding back results to NHS stakeholders.

Research themes

Patient safety

Our work in this area focuses on developing indicators of safety using large databases for both hospitals and GPs, with the recognition that a change in one behaviour, such as antibiotic prescribing, could have negative consequences as well as benefits.

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Effective use of patient data

This work is directly related to evaluating or informing healthcare policy and practice working with clinicians to develop indicators, and investigating how hospitals use our information and what is the most effective way to present the results to clinicians and hospital managers.

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Healthcare performance

One of our key aims is to research how best to use administrative databases to inform how the NHS is performing both overall but also at the level of hospital, surgeon and within primary care.

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Department of Primary Care and Public Health

Privacy notice

The Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London uses your health information for a number of purposes. The Dr Foster Unit GDPR Privacy Notice (PDF) provides a summary of how we use your information.

by Paul Aylin and Alex Bottle

Statistical Methods for Healthcare Performance Monitoring
A book for those measuring, monitoring, comparing and improving healthcare performance