On Tuesday evening, the finalists were announced for the DatSci Awards 2017. We are extremely honoured to have been selected as finalists in THREE of these categories!
The DatSci Awards are a celebration of the country’s most talented Data Scientists and the businesses in which they work. Best performance, use and contribution of Data Science in Academia, Business and the Community will be acknowledged. There are 8 categories to choose from and we at RWA are fortunate enough to be chosen as finalist in three of these categories.
Firstly, our very own Chief Data Scientist and co-founder John Hogan has been nominated as ‘Data Scientist of the Year’ sponsored by Deloitte. This category asks the nominee to provide detail on a data science project or projects conducted in the prior 12 – 18 months by the nominee that showcase why they should be data scientist of the year. John focused his application on UK multisite retail pharmacies. They are awash with data on their Dispensing system (PMR) but they hardly use it at all from a reporting point of view as they do not treat it as reliable. They have about 20 major business drivers but struggle to manage many of those consistently because of time pressures, collation effort and a lack of clarity. Through the use of data science and visualisation a solution has been devised.
When asked about his nomination John Hogan said:
‘I’m delighted to be a finalist in the Data Scientist of the Year Award at the DatSci Awards. An acknowledgement like this from the data science community, as well as RWA’s very enlightened and loyal customers gives me further confidence in our science & technology platforms.’
Real World Analytics has also been nominated for ‘Best Use of Data Science in an SME’ and ‘Best Use of Data to Achieve Social Impact.’
Requirements for nominees in the
‘Best Use of Data Science in an SME’ include having less than 250 employees,
with turnover less than €50 million. RWA focused on the 3GB of prescribing and
dispensing data that is made publicly available each month across a number of
different sources from the NHS. Being able to cohesively pull together this
data in its raw, unprocessed format to gain any real business insight has
presented a complex data problem. At RWA we have successfully contextualised
all this granular information to give a comprehensive business overview for
every pharmacy in the UK. Pharmacies can now easily understand their market
share in their local area, which doctors’ practices their items are coming from
and which local competitors are a threat to their business.
Stephen Lavery, Data Analyst noted how delighted we are to be finalists for the ‘Best Use of Data Science in an SME’ alongside all the other great companies in this category. ‘At RWA we endeavour to push the boundaries of what’s possible with our customers’ data and to be recognised for this by the Data Science Awards is a great honour.’
Real World Analytics is also nominated for a ‘Best Use of Data to Achieve Social Impact’. Our Irish pharmacy group customers had the raw data to impact the long-term health of patients but they had no way of identifying the summary levels to enable effective analysis of patient conditions. Thanks to RWA these Irish pharmacy groups can now correctly identify patients in each risk category. For example, in one of our groups with over 50,000 patients we identified over 8,000 patients were affected by Asthma each year. By isolating the prescribing balances of the BNF categories Bronchodilators V’s Corticosteroids we could identify to them that a high percentage of their Asthma patients had potentially uncontrolled or unmanaged Asthma.
When commenting on this nomination, Adele Curran, Customer Success Manager said ‘Nothing makes us more motivated than working with our customers to offer better health service. By utilising the data that is already available to them in a visual and effective way we are enabling them to achieve a more consistent approach with patients and in turn provide better patient care.'
We are thankful for the recognition from the data science community. Acknowledgements like these encourage us to keep doing what we are doing and also to educate others on the importance of a data-driven future.
We look forward to the award ceremony in September and wish the best of luck to all the other finalists.