Analytics and Evaluation support

We can provide expert advice and support to help organisations design or deliver their own evaluation activities. This can be one-off support, ongoing support throughout the duration of a project, or anywhere in between. We work with organisations to help scope evaluation projects, identify the key evaluation questions, and design a tailored approach to meet specific requirements. In doing so, we also aim to build skills, knowledge and confidence within organisations to deliver high quality evaluation. The types of support we offer may include:

• Helping you to work out what you need
• Evaluation design
• Design of surveys
• Design of interview or focus group topic guides
• Analysis plans
• Advice on methods and data capture approaches
• Support to write bids
• Independent review of plans or final reports

Where organisations do not have capacity to undertake evaluation in-house, we can undertake independent evaluation. We focus on real world evaluations (see https://thehealthinnovationnetwork.co.uk/real-world-evaluation-considerations/), with the aim of understanding the impact for patients, workforce, organisations and systems. We can also undertake smaller evaluation projects, depending on project needs. We work with organisations to understand their specific needs from an evaluation, and design a tailored approach that answers the key evaluation questions. Our team has extensive experience of conducting and analysing qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods and approaches, including:

• Interviews and focus groups
• Questionnaires and surveys
• Validated clinical outcome measures
• Theory of change and logic models
• Data design and analysis (see 'Analytics' section below)

Evidence synthesis is an important activity for many organisations who want to make informed decisions, build on existing knowledge, and identify evidence gaps about innovations, services, programmes or interventions. We have expertise in a range of evidence synthesis approaches with varying timescales, comprehensiveness, and complexity, and will work with you to identify the most appropriate approach based on your needs. This could include:

• Literature reviews
• Rapid evidence reviews
• Rapid systematic reviews
• Rapid scoping reviews
• Assessments of evidence quality
• Evidence gap maps

See our evidence review library for examples of various evidence reviews we have conducted.

You can also see slides from a previous Innovation Insights session on why evidence is important and the different types of evidence reviews.

There are a number of supporting analytics activities that can be provided either in combination or as discrete outputs, depending on the requirements of the project, for example, a process mapping and benefits workshops. We can also provide advice/design of data capture, support on the analysis process and interpretation of data. We can provide specialist analytics capacity – NHS analysts who can work with teams to identify the data required, receive sensitive health data (under a Data Processing Agreement) and combine, clean, and/or prepare data, as well as undertake analysis and present this data in a variety of formats.

The team can build data capture tools for each site to capture their data and have presentations of that data which is useful for their own use e.g. run or SPC charts, ensuring that those submitting data receive benefit from the data they are extracting or collating. These can then be received and analysed for the evaluation and, for some projects, if required, presented as a dashboard to monitor implementation progress and/or delivery of impacts and benefits during the project rather than at specific points. The analytics support is tailored to the requirement of each project.

The team can provide a range of analytics services focussed on gaining insight from complex health and care data – please see the analytics page for more information.