Introducing the Population Health Intelligence Unit (PHIU)

“Population health intelligence for decision-making to improve health and reduce health inequalities in BLMK.”

We are a small team funded by Central East Integrated Care Board (ICB) and embedded within Bedford Borough Council’s Public Health department. Our work encompasses the four unitary authorities of Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes City.

We aim to ensure that decision makers in the NHS and beyond have the right intelligence and insight at the right time to decide on priorities, plan well, measure progress, improve health outcomes and evaluate impact.

What we do

• We undertake ‘deep dives’ into the data on specific topics.
• We bring together topic-specific existing work and analysis into usable insight in dashboards or insight packs.
• We advise on indicators of population health and measurement of outcomes.
• We develop new approaches to measurement of population health.
• We provide system leadership on population health intelligence and population health management.
• We support the professional development of analyst colleagues across the ICB system, and we work collaboratively with other analytical colleagues and will pull in resource from elsewhere as appropriate.

What we don’t do

• We are not quality improvement experts (but we may be able to support data needs).
• We do not map care pathways.
• We do not undertake qualitative research, community engagement or focus groups.
• We do not go beyond what the data tells us (but work with subject matter experts who can add context).
• We do not do routine performance monitoring or BI work for the ICB or the Local Authorities.
• We don’t do health needs assessments or JSNAs or evidence reviews.
• We can’t produce lists of patients (our data does not have patient identifiers).
• We do not charge for our work.
• Sometimes we are limited by Information Governance restrictions on our use of data.

We are a small team and need to manage our capacity for maximum benefit for the health and care system, so we will not be able to fulfil all ad-hoc requests. To learn more about the team and our specialisms click here.

Contact Us

If you would like to ask the PHIU to undertake work please use our contact form. We cannot promise we will have the capacity of capability to fulfil every request but we are always happy to discuss what we can contribute. You can email us at [email protected].