RPySOC 2025

NHS-R/NHS.pycom Open Source Conference

We are pleased to announce that the RPYSOC 2025 conference will be held at the Wellcome Trust, London, offering both 🏃‍♀️ in-person and 💻 virtual attendance options!

Conference dates:

Registration

Registration for RPySOC 2025 is now FULLY BOOKED for in person tickets, but online places are still available. If you are a presenter planning to present in person, but have not yet booked an in person ticket, please contact us at nhs.rcommunity@nhs.net as soon as possible.

To book an online-only ticket, please click here.

All tickets are free, and lunch and refreshments are provided to all in person delegates.

Note

Please note that RPySOC 2025 will be hosted in partnership with Health Data Research UK and The Wellcome Trust. The information you provide when registering to attend the conference will be used to set-up your access to the in-person and/or virtual event and will be visible to the Conference Team (NHS-R Community, NHS Python Community, The Strategy Unit), Health Data Research UK, The Wellcome Trust and other registered participants for conference-related purposes, such as session participation, networking, and presenter engagement.

Programme

Day 1 - Thursday 13th November

09:00 Registration and refreshments
10:00 Welcome and safety briefing Dr Claire Welsh
10:20 Total Eclipse of the Excel Chart - A reflection on 12 years of teaching modelling and data science in the NHS Dr Dan Chalk
10:50 Beautifully reproducible dataviz: lessons learnt from building data-to-viz pipelines Cara Thompson
11:20 BREAK
11:40 Using open data and open source code to create an open elective waiting lists modelling tool (RTT Planner) Sebastian Fox
12:00 TBC TBC
12:20 opencodecounts: An R package and Shiny app exploring NHS clinical coding data Milan Wiedemann
12:30 DES-igning Better Flow: Modelling Non-Elective Admissions Helena Robinson
12:40 Mapping Accessibility: Using R5py and GTFS Data to Optimise Women’s Health Hub Locations in the Sussex Karrie Liu
12:50 A Short Story of a Short Course - Natural Language Processing in R for Health and Social Care Pawel Orzechowski and Brittany Blankinship
13:00 LUNCH
14:00 TBC TBC
14:20 Word is better than Quarto? Jacqueline Grout and Matt Dray
14:40 Deploying Python in production: containers, kubernetes and embracing yaml Amadeus Stevenson
15:00 Modelling Community waiting lists with NHS-R waiting list library Simon Wellesley-Miller
15:10 Transforming Health Needs Assessments: Reproducible Insights for Smarter NHS Planning Rachel Christie
15:20 Building QA into everyday workflows with GitHub Rhian Davies
15:30 BREAK
15:50 The story of patientflow: from hospital prototype to Python package Zella King
16:10 Going for Gold: Adopting RAP-by-default to Create Analysts from Nowhere. Joe Wilson
16:30 Zhuzhing custom error messages with {cli} Fran Barton
16:40 Shattered pottery and cancer data: using R to rejoin the pieces Joe Shaw
16:50 Day 1 closing remarks HDR UK
17:00 CLOSE of day 1

Day 2 - Friday 14th November

Note

Please note - we will be running the Unconference throughout day 2 on level 6 of the Wellcome Trust (see signage for directions or contact a member of the conference staff for details)

09:00 Registration and refreshments
10:00 Welcome and safety brief Dr Claire Welsh and HDR UK
10:20 Reusable by Default: Reflections on Building Sustainable Open Tools and Knowledge for Healthcare Sammi Rosser
10:50 3 years on NHS-RPy Unconference: open, self-organising exchange of ideas Pawel Orzechowski and Brittany Blankinship
11:00 Practical Testing for Reproducible Analytical Pipelines Thomas Jemmett
11:20 BREAK
11:40 How we delivered the OpenSAFELY platform to analyse the whole population’s GP records securely, transparently, with open code Prof Ben Goldacre
12:10 Patient-Level Analytics That Work: Using R to Achieve Rapid, Sustained MRSA Screening Compliance Improvements Daniel Weiand
12:30 TBC TBC
12:50 Making national cancer audit reporting Shiny: a journey from Excel to web-based apps using R and Reproducible Analytical Pipelines. Ella Barber
13:00 LUNCH
14:00 Data Querying using Natural Language Abhinav Jindal (Jin)
14:10 MetaInsight - an R shiny app for network meta-analysis Simon Smart
14:20 Better together: lessons from RAP drop-ins YiWen Hon
14:30 TBC TBC
14:40 Learnings from implementing machine learning models on NHS Federated Data Platform for predicting operational pressures escalation levels. Kenneth Quan
14:50 Introduction to Causal Inference for R and Python users Nathan Thomas
15:10 Publishing reproducible websites using R Quarto: Camden’s JSNA Hub Annie Yu
15:20 What Patients Ask: Harnessing Free-Text Data for Patient-Centred Care Mimi Reyburn
15:30 Closing remarks Dr Claire Welsh and HDR UK
16:00 CLOSE of day 2

We are excited to announce that the following keynote speakers will be presenting at RPySOC 2025!

Professor Ben Goldacre is Bennett Professor of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science. Recent projects include OpenPrescribing.net and OpenSAFELY.org, an open source secure data platform that has delivered high impact research analyses across 58 million patients’ GP records, developed in close collaboration with electronic health record system suppliers TPP and Optum (formerly EMIS). He is also a best selling writer of popular science books, and author of the Goldacre Review (“Better, Broader, Safer Uses of Health Data”) for Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, published in April 2022.

Sammi Rosser is a researcher and teacher with an interest in how data science and operational research approaches can be used to improve the lives of patients. As a trainer on the Health Service Modelling Associates (HSMA) program, she is passionate about spreading the word about open approaches and empowering people to learn Python and apply it to healthcare problems. Her work focuses on pathway simulation modelling, geographic optimization, and data visualisation, and she has developed a range of tools, packages and eBooks designed to make reproducible healthcare analytics more accessible. Drawing on her experience from her time in the NHS and from advising on NHS data science projects across the country, she emphasises practical and pragmatic approaches for advancing the way the NHS uses data to support better decision-making.

Dr Dan Chalk is a Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration for the South West Peninsula (PenARC), Director of the Health Service Modelling Associates (HSMA) Programme since its inception, and former chair of the PenCHORD research team.  He has nearly 15 years of experience collaborating with the NHS to apply Operational Research and Data Science methods to improve service delivery, with particular expertise in Discrete Event Simulation and Agent Based Simulation, and his work has led to reductions in cancer waiting times, supported end of life care resource planning, and fed into national policy making on diabetic retinopathy screening.  He has spent the last 12 years teaching and mentoring NHS staff to develop and apply skills in modelling and data science, and is a firm believer that anyone can be taught how to code and how to develop models with the right support.  He is a passionate advocate of open science and the use of Free and Open Source solutions.

Cara Thompson is an Edinburgh-based data visualisation consultant. She specialises in helping teams of data folks make the most of dataviz to communicate their insights to non specialist audiences. Alongside training and commisions, a lot of her work revolves around creating and automating dataviz design systems - a set of rules for colours and fonts which allow analysts to create on-brand and accessible visualisations that also look good, without all the soul searching normally involved in doing that. She is passionate about equipping others to make the most of dataviz, and always looks forward to hearing what others are up to!

Please post all questions for speakers in the conference Slack channel. Check back regularly as speakers will respond when they can.

Delegate Information Pack

🕌 Venue details

Wellcome Trust, Gibbs Building, 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE

🚗 Travel and accessibility

Please refer to the Wellcome Trust website for travel and site accessibility advice.

If you would like us to reserve you a seat in the main auditorium please email us at nhs.rcommunity@nhs.net.

Important

Data Collection

Please be advised that any data/information collected (from you) before, during and after RPySOC 2025 will be used for the purpose of administration within the NHS-R Community, NHS Python Community, The Strategy Unit and event co-sponsors. Your data/information will not be disclosed to any third party, except within the terms of UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018. The data/information will also be used to support the NHS-R Community’s, NHS Python Community’s, The Strategy Unit’s and event co-sponsors’ event management, marketing and market research activities.

To see our host organisation’s (NHS Midlands and Lancashire) Privacy Policy please CLICK HERE

Recordings and Photography

Where possible, conference talks and activities will be recorded and published online. If you would NOT like to be recorded, please make the Conference Team aware via the event registration form, an email to nhs.rcommunity@nhs.net, by direct message on Slack and/or to the Conference Team in-person.

A photographer will be present at The Wellcome Trust, if you would NOT like to be photographed and have your image published online, please make the Conference Team aware via the event registration form, an email to nhs.rcommunity@nhs.net, by direct message on Slack and/or to the Conference Team in-person.

If for any reason you wish to withdraw your consent for any of the aforementioned, please email the Conference Team via nhs.rcommunity@nhs.net.

Getting around the venue

👩‍✈️ Chaperone service

The main conference hall is on Level 6. We also have a quiet room and prayer room for your use, which will be held on a different level (all accessed via lift). Access to each floor in the building is strictly by chaperone, thus you will need to be escorted between floors, and in and out of the building. We will be operating a separate Slack channel (#rpysoc25_chaperone) devoted to this. If you require to access a different floor, please make your way to the Chaperone Waiting Station and add a message to the Slack channel to request a member of HDR UK to chaperone you.

🤐 Venue room access

Please note that the Wellcome Trust is a busy working office building. We have kindly been granted use of a number of rooms over the two days of the conference, but there will be some rooms marked as ‘off limits’ for delegates. Please respect these signs and our generous sponsors by avoiding making excessive noise around these rooms or attempting to enter.

☎️ Space for calls

There are individual pods on the main conference floor which you can use to make phonecalls.

🎒 Cloakroom

A cloakroom will also be available for storing luggage, but please note, all items are left at the owners risk and neither NHS-R, HDR UK nor the Wellcome Trust accept any liability for items that may be lost, stolen or damaged.

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