The researcher then uses the data to answer their question. This is trickier than it looks!
Because the data come directly from the NHS, they often have to do a bit of tidying up. They need to do three things:
- Check the data: For example, if a hospital starts using a new machine for a blood test, the numbers that show the test results might change. They need to make sure all the numbers make sense.
- Clean the data: Sometimes, there might be mistakes in the data, like saying someone is over 150 years old. Researchers have to fix these mistakes.
- Rearrange the data: They might want to organize the data in a better way. For example, they could group people’s ages into categories. Or they might put together data from different sources to make it easier to understand, like working out when patients got different types of antibiotics during a hospital stay.
Now, they are at the exciting part – the analysis stage! They work out how to use the data based on the questions they want to answer. There are different kinds of things they could do:
- Descriptive analysis: This is like drawing pictures and making summaries to talk about the data. For example, we might make graphs to show how many cases of a stomach infection called “C diff” there have been over the last 10 years.
- Statistical analysis: We use fancy math called statistics to see what we can work out from the data. For instance, we might wonder if some types of doctors are more likely to give antibiotics than others, so we use statistics to help us find the answer.
- Machine learning or artificial intelligence: We also use computer programs to help us. It’s like teaching a computer to predict things or find patterns. For example, we might try to predict if someone’s chest infection will get worse and turn into a very serious type of infection called pneumonia.
When they’ve got their answers, the last thing they do is share them with others. There are lots of ways they can do this:
- Writing papers in science magazines: Researchers write down all the answers they found and share them in special magazines that scientists read.
- These papers are sent to the team who agreed that the study could be done to make sure that researchers haven’t used the data for anything else
- All these papers have to be freely available so anyone can read them
- You can find a list of all the science papers researchers have written using IORD data in IORD Publications.
- Talking at conferences: Sometimes, researchers go to meetings to talk to other researchers about what they have found out.
- Sharing with people working in the Oxford hospitals: we make sure that people working in the hospital know what the researchers have found so they can use it to make the hospitals better at handling infections right away.
- Using the IORD website: Sometimes researchers try to write a short summary of what they have found that we can put on the IORD website.
- Social media like X: Researchers might post quick updates or share interesting facts on X or other places like that to get the word out.
Once the study is done, we get in touch with the researchers and ask them to delete the data they used. They have to tell us that they’ve done this. It’s like making sure all the pieces of a puzzle are put away after you’ve finished playing with it.
You can find out more about how this works in IORD application trajectory.