Photo: Gorodenkoff Productions OU/Getty Images
For many healthcare organisations, the challenge is no longer collecting data but utilising it in a way that meaningfully improves care at the frontline.
At East London NHS Foundation Trust in the United Kingdom, that shift has been underway for nearly a decade, led by Dr Amar Shah, now national clinical director for improvement at NHS England. His work focused not only on building advanced analytics capabilities, but on ensuring those capabilities translated into better care.
"There was a hunger for data, and our systems were not able to keep up," Shah said. "I understood what clinicians needed and what would work in their workflow, but you need to present data in the right way; you need to get the back end right.
"We had many quality and safety systems, patient feedback systems, workforce finance systems … about 15 different systems, none of which really integrated," he said.
The transformation saw East London NHS Foundation Trust move from fragmented, on-premises systems to a fully integrated, cloud-based data warehouse. Structured at team level and enabling near real-time access, the system allowed frontline teams to access insights relevant to their services rather than solely organisation-wide reporting.
TEAM FEEDBACK IS CRUCIAL
For Shah, the journey was as much about learning what individual teams required as it was about technology. The turning points were building team technical capability plus establishing clear design principles.
"One was about building technical skill in the team so that over time we were able to do most of the work ourselves," Shah said. "The second was having very clear principles about how we wanted to bring data into the hands of our clinical and corporate teams.
"Lots of places design around what the board needs," he continued. "We did it the opposite way around, starting from teams and then building from there."
Using Microsoft Power BI, the organisation moved beyond static dashboards. "Many build dashboards that show how you are doing today," Shah said. "We were much more interested in how we are doing over time. … Are we improving or not? What do we need to address?"
WHY IT MATTERS
The success of advanced analytics doesn't begin with data – it begins with purpose, as it changes how clinicians perceive data, Shah explained. "Data is an enabler. The starting point has to be what the team and the patients they care for want to improve."
He added: "Most of the time, people's experience of data is that it is used to judge them. We need to put data back in the hands of our teams and create an environment where they can ask questions and be curious."
As such, a central element to the East London NHS Foundation Trust approach was making data accessible to all staff, not just leadership.
"We wanted to democratise data," Shah said, stating that the organisation also standardised how data was presented, ensuring consistency across services.
ACHIEVING HIMSS AMAM STAGE 6
In December 2025, East London NHS Foundation Trust achieved HIMSS Analytics Maturity Assessment Model (AMAM) Stage 6, becoming the first organisation in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to do so under updated requirements.
"It means three things," Shah said. "One is external validation that we are on the right path. The second is the pride in the team that has done the work. And the third is there's Stage 7, meaning there is still more to do."
So, with this latest achievement, what advice does Shah have for others? "Connect it to something that is focused on improving care," he said. "Make sure clinicians are right at the heart of how you do it. If people have to go through multiple systems, they just won't use it. Everything has to be in one place and easy to access."
Dr Amar Shah, national clinical director for improvement at NHS England, presents the transformation journey on 20 May at the HIMSS26 European Conference in Copenhagen in the session "Show Me the Numbers: Using Data to Drive Workforce Appreciation and Clinical Improvement." Learn more and register here.
