Across the East and West Midlands, 12 integrated intelligence functions are helping health and care leaders to make evidence-informed decisions through careful analysis and expert evaluation.
Our role, as the Midlands Decision Support Network, is to bring these DSUs together to share great practice, exchange knowledge and collaborate with one another.
The Midlands Decision Support Network is supported by the Strategy Unit. The Strategy Unit acts as a development centre for the region, with a remit to:
- develop the skills of our workforce to be more effective at collaborative decision making
- deliver actionable insight on the health and care challenges facing network members across the region
- extract scale benefits, delivering analytical firepower greater than the sum of its parts
- develop best in class ways of addressing ‘wicked’ problems
- mobilise knowledge to inspire learning and avoid duplication of effort
The Strategy Unit acts as a development centre for local integrated intelligence functions within the Midlands Region
Training and development offer
The training and development programme focuses on the provision of training and development for network members in analytics, knowledge mobilisation and evaluation, to raise standards consistently across the region with:
- targeted development programmes combining training, reflection and project work
- large scale open events to support learning and sharing, connect staff with expertise
- ongoing seminar series informed by network priorities
Training and development programme lead: Mohammed Amin Mohammed
Regional analytical programme
The regional analytical programme focuses on delivering large scale analytical projects to address the ‘big questions’, selected through extensive engagement with network members:
- 2-3 large analytical projects per year on behalf of the region
- bespoke system reports, support for knowledge mobilisation and application of findings
- access to underpinning materials, support for local analytical teams to conduct further work
Regional analytical programme lead: Steven Wyatt
Active knowledge exchange
This programme has centered on the development of communities of practice and shared resources to help network members to learn from each other by:
- creating and hosting communities of practice for analysis, evaluation and evidence. For example, the Midlands Analyst Network
- providing guidance and tools to support local DSUs to develop core functions
- developing and managing a regional knowledge library
The three communities of practice are:
- Midlands Analysts Network
- Midlands Evaluation Community of Practice
- Midlands Knowledge Mobilisation Community of Practice
Contacts:
Programme Director: Simon Bourne
Programme Manager: Kimberley Messam
Midlands Systems: Clare Humble
General enquiries: Deb Mabbley and Charlotte Henderson