NHS-R Online Speaker Conference 2022 – 9th November 2022

I’m Benjamin Bainham, I’m a Senior Improvement Analyst in Improvement Cymru. I have a strong interest in Discrete Event Simulation and looking to expand my horizons in the world of modelling! R has been one of the foundations throughout my degree and my career journey.

Iñaki Ucar is Assistant Professor at the Department of Statistics and Research Fellow at the Big Data Institute of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain). He is Director of the Master in Computational Social Science, an open-source advocate and R package author. He has developed expertise in statistical software, high-performance computing, simulation, data wrangling and visualisation, network analysis and Markov processes. His current research interests are varied, including interpretability of ML models, and the application of data science to problems related to social networks, collective behaviour, inequality and misinformation.

Sam is a Principal Data Scientist in the Data Science Skilled Team at NHS Digital and leader of their "RAP Squad". After his Physics degree, he started working at NHS Digital in 2011 (with some time away to do a PhD in stem cell biology in the middle!). He started in data management, automating manual processes using SSIS and SQL, and helping grow a common reference data library with a motto of "make once, use many times". Returning after his PhD, Python (learnt in his degree) was gaining in popularity in the business and he migrated towards the Data Science team. After doing many fascinating projects, including making models to predict critical care bed occupancy during the pandemic, he moved into a role helping researchers utilise the patient data and get the most out of NHS Digital's TRE. He now leads the RAP squad, helping define good practice and train analysts in the "Reproducible Analytical Pipelines" approach (including learning Python and Git).

Check out their RAP Community of Practice webpage here:

https://nhsdigital.github.io/rap-community-of-practice/

Tom is a champion of code-first analytics (to the annoyance of some!), and leads a growing team of analysts in NUH’s Family Health division. His team have been working hard to streamline reporting processes, turning data into information, and information into insight for the users who need it. Tom is a developer on the {NHSRplotthedots} and {SPCreporter} packages, which have been key in enabling efficient reporting, and has also built some niche open-source packages in support of maternity service improvement, including {robson10classifier} and {MSDSpipeline}. A few years into his R journey, he’s happy to help anyone get up and started with R.
Github: https://github.com/ThomUK
Twitter: https://twitter.com/analyst42

Rory is working as a data analyst for the Clinical Directorate of the National Ambulance Service of Ireland in Limerick, Ireland since 2020. He has been using R as one of his main analytic tools for about 6 years now.

Jessica Pang is an improvement analyst who has worked in the NHS in Wales for 8 years in Improvement Cymru (formerly 1000 Lives Improvement Service) in Public Health Wales. She is the deputy branch lead for the Welsh branch of AphA and a professionally registered healthcare analyst as well as an NHS-R community fellow.

In 2019, fate (otherwise known as Kate, Jessica's manager) intervened and she picked up the programming language of R to create her first RShiny application. Through many mistakes and do overs, Jessica became an R user. Since that first foray into R, she has learnt many things that have improved her R coding and RShiny creations, many of them at previous NHS-R Community conferences.

Through use of R and a focus on open coding that has been influenced by events and groups like the NHS-R Community, AphA and the Welsh Modelling Collaborative, Jess has been able to adapt and adjust code built by herself and others. In two lightning talks this year, Jess will demonstrate how she has adapted her own code to add new features to an application and how she has adapted the code of others shared through GitHub for use with local data.

Shannon Pileggi is a Lead Data Scientist at The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium, a frequent blogger, and a member of the R-Ladies Global team. She enjoys automating data wrangling and data outputs, and making both data insights and learning new material digestible.

I am a postdoc fellow in Health Services Research at the Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety, which is associated with the Houston VA and Baylor College of Medicine. I received my BA in psychology from the University of Maryland, my Masters of Science in experimental psychology from Syracuse University, and my PhD in cognitive psychology from University of New South Wales. My research interests include improving diagnostic decision-making, reducing errors in medicine, and studying the effects of interruptions and time-pressure on decision-making. In my free time, you can find me working out at my local CrossFit gym, watching sports (Go Ravens!), or doing cross stitch.