HCM6004 - Health Analytics and Planning: Analysis Briefing Paper Assignment

Assignment Task

Brief

As part of the formal assessment for the programme you are required to submit a Health Analytics and Planning assignment. Please refer to your Student Handbook for full details of the programme assessment scheme and general information on preparing and submitting assignments.

Assignment

Compile an analysis briefing paper, whereby you have identified a health or social care system based quantitative enquiry; gathered, manipulated, and analysed publicly available data to evidence and understand the enquiry at hand; and in conclusion present an evidence based, data driven solution suggestion. At this level of study, your ability to present complex information succinctly and communicate complex information clearly, will be assessed. You should take responsibility to identify the enquiry and the direction of your work yourself. Your briefing paper should be formatted as you wish in a Word document, i.e. portrait or landscape orientation and with boxes/images/columns as desired. All images and/or figures must be referenced, as well as data and literature sources as usual. You should embed your excel data files within this one submission. You will be assessed on:

• your definition of the enquiry to be addressed within the health and social care system and your ability to discuss the context of addressing this problem (policies, dynamics in other related areas, etc.) 
• your critical review and choice of appropriate data sources and the extent to which they fit the enquiry 
• your demonstration of data extraction and analysis techniques
• your discussion around the extent to which the analysis and outputs address the initial question 
• your ability to present complex information succinctly
• your presentation
• your referencing and supporting information

Task: Analysis Briefing Paper

You are asked to compile an analysis briefing paper, whereby you have identified a health or social care system based quantitative enquiry; gathered, manipulated, and analysed publicly. Available data to evidence and understand the enquiry at hand, and in conclusion present an evidence based; data driven solution suggestion.

Executive Summary

The executive summary should summarise your report. Words should be enough. The executive summary is not considered as part of your word count. The assessor who reads this summary should be able to understand the essence of your report (without having to read it all) and the story behind it.

Background /Statement of problem or Research question

Step 1: What is the research question? What do you seek to investigate? What problem do you want to address?

As this is mainly a quantitative study PICO, ECLIPSE or SPIDER framework can be used to design the research question. (See Example 1, 2 and 3 at the end of guide)

Define the problem-using statistics and evidenced-based studies. A problem statement and aim of the briefing paper should be clearly presented. To gain a higher score, discussion should be critical and compelling with good references to authentic sources and within the health and social care system.

Data collection approach/presentation of findings

Student to discuss data needed to answer the research question or understand the problem they are investigating. For Higher marks, students are to provide justification for their choices including discussion on the credibility of sources.

Step 2: Collect data, analysing data and Interpreting healthcare data to improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and increase efficiency in the healthcare system.

You can investigate quality improvement measures such as trends in diseases, patient satisfaction survey, waiting times, never events or medical errors in the NHS, morbidity, and mortality rates etc.

1. Collect data that fit the line of enquiry.
2. Use digital tool such as Excel and SPSS software to compile data.
3. Conduct statistical analysis to identify trends, correlations, or regression analysis of data (your choice is based on your study).
4. Interpret your data (For example is there a decrease or increase in child obesity, has the re-admission rate increased or the waiting times improved over time? What about correlations (is there a correlation between COVID death rate and lung infections? Or antenatal attendance and neonatal death rate?)
5. Good presentation of information in charts, tables and graphs is expected.

Step 3: Discussion

Student to present discussion on study findings (evidenced-based). What did you find out from the statistical analysis. Have you answered the research questions or found the solution to a problem or discussed a pattern in disease? Are there previous studies that back up your findings or have discussed your topic. This is opportunity for provide a critical perspective.

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