NHS-R Committee Meeting
22 February 2024
Via Teams
Attendees: Zoë Turner (Chair), Bianca O’Mahoney (notes), Stewart Loughlin, Neil Bray, Mia Hatton, Chris Mainey, Ellen Coughlan, Pablo Leon Rodenas, Thomas Jemmett, Ben Murch, Lynda Howard
Apologies: Anastasiia Zharinova, Sam Collins
Social media and comms – ZT and AZ met to discuss taking forward social media and comms for the Conference.
Audio Visual (AV) – BO’M and Maciej Waszak-Hayes will be meeting with the AV Team at ICC to discuss our requirements for the conference. This will include live streaming to a suitable platform, editing and a recording suitable for uploading to YouTube.
NHS-R has been offered a workshop space at the HACA conference, which is taking place at Telford International Centre on 23 and 24 July.
CM kindly offered to take the lead and put forward the following proposals:
- Opportunity to ‘sell’ NHS-R beyond analysts and provide NHS managers who have never used R and Python with an overview of what it is and what it can do.
- Two sets of presentations during the day to include examples of R and Python.
- One hour ‘blasts’ through R and Python for example
- navigating, plotting etc.\
- Panel session with Q&A; how to get started clinic.
- It was also suggested that a beginner, intermediate and advanced sessions could be run. This will require around six people to assist and engagement with the Python Community.\
Action: TJ to ask YiWen Hon re Python Action: ZT and BO’M to use social media platforms to attract volunteers
The deadline for submission of abstracts for HACA is 28 February – this would be a great opportunity to help to raise NHS-R Community profile.
It will be important to ensure that the call for abstracts for HACA does not clash or overlap with those for NHS-R Conference.
Post meeting note: in 2023, HACA was held on 11 and 12 July and NHS-R Conference on 17 and 18 October. Abstracts for NHS-R conference were first called for in April with a May deadline which was then extended until June.
The NHS-R Community website became unavailable during weekend commencing 17 February. Thanks goes to TJ for investigating and being able to bring the website back on-line. The current maintenance contract may not be competitively priced and does not include out of hours contacts.
ZT is currently building a new website written in Quarto which could be hosted free of charge through GitHub and would allow the Community to maintain. The WordPress platform which is used for course bookings may prove to be difficult to replicate. However, other options for course bookings are being investigated more widely by the SU and consideration should be given to using Eventbrite which would be more reliable. Action: ZT/BO’M to add website issues to risk register
NHS-R Committee CM thanked ZT for all that she does and encouraged all to play an active role in the Community. Contributions are welcome for blogs, work on statistics and anything else that people feel would be of benefit to NHS-R. However, it was acknowledged that some areas of the NHS and Government are less open to allowing for such time commitments.
All congratulated MH on her new role; the door will be open for her to re-join the Committee once settled in her new role. She recommended finding champions to communicate through instead of one person shouting out to whole community. Previously, there were titles available such as senior fellow and consideration will be given to bring these back and be clear about what people do in these roles. Action: BO’M to add to agenda for next meeting.
The new programme of courses for 2024 is live with the first Intro to R course being held on 21 February followed by Understanding Functions in R on 22 February. The courses are booking up very quickly with long waiting lists. However, it was acknowledged that over time it may become difficult to get people to keep doing repeats of the same courses. It was suggested running a MOOC (massive open on-line conference) potentially using Web R and also a platform that is currently used in MLCSU for other training.