The project aimed to support our electronic birth cohorts (called Born and Bred In or BaBi) in four areas – Bradford, Doncaster, Wakefield and Leeds. BaBi involves linking together routine data about pregnant women and their babies from different services like midwives, GPs, schools etc. Women are asked by midwives during routine appointments if they consent for their data to be used in this way.
The Data Accelerator project brought together organisations with different skills in handling data to learn from each other and deliver the following:
- Workshops with multidisciplinary teams across the local authorities, NHS and local communities to help areas identify key questions and local priorities that will make use of the linked data. This activity will identify priorities and build capacity within teams to think about how data can support their work.
- Recruitment and training of new and existing staff in data linkage methods and analysis.
- Establishing data sharing agreements, collaboration agreements and data flows with relevant data controllers.
- Establish two Communities of Practice across the partnership to share skills and build networks.
- Creation of a toolkit to support other areas to establish a similar project.
